17" 


J 


BR  121  .K57 

1917 

King,  Henry 

Churchill, 

1858 

1934. 

Fundamental 

questions 

FUNDAMENTAL   QUESTIONS 


-J^^>^ 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO  -    DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


Fundamental   Questions 


V^^ 


4!, 

BY 


HENRY   CHURCHILL   KING 

AUTHOR   OF 

"  THE   LAWS  OF   FRIENDSHIP  " 

"  RATIONAL   LIVING  " 

ETC. 


THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 
1917 

Jll  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1917, 
By  the  MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  January,  1917. 


Narfaoooli  i^ress 

J.  8.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

This  volume  aims  to  deal,  in  not  too  technical 
fashion,  with  some  of  the  most  fundamental  ques- 
tions, theoretical  and  practical,  which  are  involved 
in  the  Christian  view  of  God  and  the  world.  It 
is  naturally  intended,  thus,  both  to  answer  diffi- 
culties and  to  suggest  lines  of  thought  which 
may  help  to  confirm  and  to  clarify  Christian  faith. 

Its  chapters  take  up  in  order  the  perennial 
problem  for  all  ideal  views,  —  the  question  of 
suffering  and  sin ;  the  difficulties  for  any  religious 
view  which  gather  around  prayer,  —  the  central 
relation  of  revelation  and  response  between  God 
and  men ;  the  question  of  how  we  may  best  think 
of  Christ,  —  the  central  fact  of  the  Christian  reli- 
gion ;  and  then,  in  the  light  of  these  conclusions, 
four  large  problems  for  Christian  thought  and 
life  :  the  questions  of  life's  fundamental  decision, 
of  life's  fundamental  paradox  of  liberty  and  law, 
of  Christian  unity,  and  of  Christianity  as  a  world 
religion. 


vi  PREFACE 

Each  of  the  last  four  questions,  as  well  as  the 
first  three,  are  truly  fundamental  and  vital.  The 
question  of  life's  fundamental  decision  has  to  do 
with  those  basic  will-attitudes  which  chiefly  give 
to  life  its  reality  and  meaning  and  value.  The 
kinship  of  religion  with  all  earnest  living  can  be 
here  discerned.  The  question  of  life's  funda- 
mental paradox  of  liberty  and  law  is  necessarily 
involved  in  man's  use  of  his  will,  and  its  solution 
is  requisite  both  for  the  satisfaction  of  man's 
reason,  and  for  his  ethical  and  religious  freedom. 
Every  life  has  this  paradox  constantly  to  face. 
The  question  of  Christian  unity  refuses  to  be  ig- 
nored, and  probably  no  other  generation  has  seen 
so  much  definite  effort  for  the  unification  of  Chris- 
tianity. It  concerns  us  all  to  estimate  values  and 
measures  aright  at  this  point.  Moreover,  the 
question  of  Christianity  as  a  world  religion,  the 
Christian  church  must  frankly  face,  both  for 
the  justification  of  its  world-wide  missionary  en- 
deavors, and  to  meet  the  demands  made  upon 
it  by  the  complex  modern  world  in  this  time  of 
world-shaking  war.  There  is  a  very  real  sense  in 
which  Christianity  as  a  world  religion  is  on  trial. 

Parts  of  this  volume  have  been  printed  before, 
but  nothing  is  included  that  is  not  believed  to 
have  vital  connection  with  the  theme.  Thanks  are 
due  to  The  Biblical  Worlds  The  Pilgrim    Teacher^ 


PREFACE  vii 

The  Constructive  ^arterly^  The  International  Re- 
view of  Missions^  and  The  Expositor,  for  permis- 
sion to  use  material  which  has  appeared  in  their 

pages. 

HENRY    CHURCHILL   KING. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   I 

THE   QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN—  THE 
PERENNIAL   PROBLEM  FOR  ALL   IDEAL    VIEWS 

PAGE 

I.    Preliminary  Considerations     .        .        .        .  i 

1 .  The  three  realms  of  reality         ....  3 

2.  The  universality  of  the  problem         ...  5 

3.  Suffering  in  the  animal  world    ....  7 

II.    The  Prerequisites  of  Moral  Character       .  12 

1.  Some  genuine  freedom  of  volition      ...  13 

2.  Some  power  of  accomplishment          ...  16 

3.  An  imperfect  developing  world  .         .         .         •  17 

4.  That  men  should  be  members  one  of  another    .  18 

5.  A  sphere  of  laws 20 

6.  Some  element  of  struggle  .         .         .         .         .21 

III.     Help  from  the  Common  Deeper  Life  of  Men      23 

1.  The  smallness  of  man's  view     .         .         .         -25 

2.  Added  light  upon  the  trend  of  the  world^s  devel- 

opment        29 

3.  Man's  faith  in  immortality         .         .         .         .31 

4.  The  four  common  views  of  suffering  ...       34 
(i)  Suffering  as  punishment  for  sin  .         .         .       35 

(2)  Suffering  as  discipline         ....       36 

(3)  Suffering  as  necessary  to  save  men  from 

simple  prudential  selfishness        .         .       38 

(4)  The  majesty  of  God 41 


X  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

IV.    The  Christian  Implications  of  Man's  Nature   .  43 

1.  Man  made  for  heroic  achievement      ...  45 

2.  Life  deepens  through  opposition         ...  46 

3.  Man  made  for  personal  relations         ...  47 

4.  The  joy  of  redeeming  work        ....  48 

5.  The  greatest  sufferers  not  the  most  unhappy      .  49 

6.  Growth  of  love  through  fellowship  in  suffering  .  51 

7.  Suffering  the  key  to  life's  most  precious  experi- 

ences            51 

V.     Light  from  Christ 54 

1.  Christ's  suffering  has  proved  vicarious        .         .  55 

2.  This  suggests  that  all  suffering  may  be  made 

vicarious     .......  58 

3.  Suffering  can  be  turned  into  voluntary  sacrifice, 

and  so  become  an  instrument  of  joy    .         .  59 

4.  The  suffering  of  Christ,  as  a  power  against  sin 

also 61 

5.  The  suffering  death  of  Christ,  a  revelation  of 

the  heart  of  God 63 


CHAPTER   II 

THE  QUESTION  OF  PRAYER— THE  HEART 
OF  RELIGION.  DIFFICULTIES  CONCERN- 
ING PRAYER 

Difficulties     Connected     with     a     Supposed 

Scientific  View-point 66 

1 .  No  doubt  of  men's  need  of  a  sphere  of  law         .  66 

2.  But  no  eternally  self-existing  laws      ...  67 

3.  No  doubt  of  man's  need  of  God  ...  67 

4.  No  compelling  reason  to  deny  access  of  God  to 

human  minds      ......  68 

5.  Man,  as  the  goal  of  evolution     ....  70 

6.  Prayer  fits  human  nature 70 

7.  Are  not  narrowly  to  fix  the  scope  of  prayer         .  72 


CONTENTS  xi 


II.    Difficulties    prom    a    False    Conception    of 
Prayer    .        .        .        . 


1.  The  idea  of  a  prayer  gauge 

2.  God  knows  what  I  need     .... 

III.  Difficulties    from    the     Supposed     Improba 

BiLiTY  OF  Prayer  . 

1 .  God  is  ;  we  are 

2.  We  need  God   . 

3.  All  men  impelled  to  pray 

4.  The  example  of  the  best 

5 .  Christ's  own  practice,  example,  and  urging 

IV.  Difficulty   from  the  Lack  of  a  Felt  Pres 

ENCE  AND  Response  in  Prayer  . 

1 .  God  known  through  his  self-manifestations 

2.  Relation  to  spiritual  world  compared  to  relation 

to  physical  world 

3.  Even  in  closest  personal  relations,  no  literal 

transfer  of  thought 

4 

5.  God's  relation  to  men  should  be  unobtrusive 

6.  What  kind  of  answers  to  prayer  really  to  be 

desired 


V.    The  Difficulty  of  Intercessory  Prayer 


75 
75 

n 

81 
82 
82 
82 
83 
83 

85 
86 

87 

88 
90 
90 

92 
94 


CHAPTER   III 

THE  QUESTION  OF  CHRIST—  THE  CENTRAL 
FACT  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  RELIGION: 
HOW  ARE  WE  TO  THINK  ABOUT  CHRIST i 

I.  The  Best  Life 97 

II.  The  Best  Ideals  and  Standards        ...  98 

III.  The  Best  Insight  into  the  Lavv^s  of  Life         .  99 

IV.  The  Best  Convictions loi 

V.  The  Best  Hopes 102 


xii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

VI.     The  Best  Dynamic  for  Living  .        .        .103 

VII.    The  Best  Revelation  of  God  .        .        .105 

CHAPTER   IV 

THE   QUESTION  OF  LIFE'S  FUNDAMENTAL 
DECISION 

I.     Drifting  or  Steering in 

II.    Domination    by    Feeling    or    by    Rational 

Purpose 112 

III.  Loyalty  or  Disloyalty 113 

IV.  Following  One's  Conscience  or  Not      .        .114 
V.    The  Surrender  or   Not,  to   the  Scientific 

Spirit 115 

VI.    The  Larger  Life  or  the  Lesser  Good  .        .116 

VII.    Wilful  or  Obedient 117 

VIII.     Following  Duty  or  Pleasure.        .        .        .118 
IX.    Taking  On  or  Refusing  the  Will  of  God    .     119 
X.     Deep-going  Ethical  Decision,  even  without 

Religious  Faith 121 

XI.    The  Love  of  the  Father  or  the  Love  of 

THE  World 123 

XII.     Selfish  or  Unselfish 128 

XIII.     Disciple  of  Christ  or  Not       .        .        .        .129 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  QUESTION  OF  LIFES  FUNDAMENTAL 
PARADOX—  THE  QUESTION  OF  LIB- 
ERTY AND  LA  W  :   THE  LA  W  OF  LIBER  T  Y 

I.     The  Fundamental  Nature  of  the  Problem  .     133 
II.     Why  this  Problem  Constantly  Recurs  .     137 


CONTENTS  xlii 

PAGE 

III.  The  New  Testament  Solution  of  the  Prob- 

lem          144 

IV.  The  Relation  of  the  Christian  Solution  of 

THE  Paradox  to  Other  Theories  of  Life     148 

V.     Modern  Examples  of  the  Paradox        .        -153 

VI.    The  Achievement  of  True  Freedom       .        .     163 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   QUESTION  OF  CHRISTIAN  UNITY— 
THE   CONFESSION  OF   CHRIST 

I.    The  One  Uniting  Word  is  Christian     .        .171 
II.     Temperamental  Differences    .        .        .        •     i74 

III.  A  True  Organic  Unity 176 

IV.  Uniformity  Not  Desirable               .        •  "^11 
V.     Complete  Uniformity  of  Belief  and  State- 
ment Impossible 

VI.     Complete  Uniformity  of  Belief  and  State- 
ment Undesirable 183 

VII.     Our   Real   Unity   in   Our   Common    Life    in 

Christ '^6 


180 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE  QUESTION  OF  CHRISTIANITY  AS  A 
WORID  RELIGION  I:  CHRISTIANITY 
THE  ONLY  HOPEFUL  BASIS  FOR 
ORIENTAL    CIVILIZATION 

The  Need  of  an  Adequate  Spiritual  Basis 

for  Any  Civilization 191 

The   Increasing   Sense   of   Need   of  a  New 

Spiritual  Basis  for  Oriental  Civilization    194 


xiv  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

III.  The  Necessary  Threefold  Test  of  the  Re- 

ligious Basis  of  a  Modern  Civilization  .     199 

1.  Neither  the  Emperor  cult  nor  Shinto  can  meet 

these  tests 200 

2.  Nor  can  Buddhism  or  Confucianism  .         .  200 

3.  Nor  a  new  religious  syncretism  .         .         .  202 

IV.  Only  Christianity   Can   Meet  These  Tests, 

AND  Furnish  an  Adequate  Spiritual 
Basis  for  the  Modern  Civilization  of 
the  Orient 205 

CHAPTER   VIII 

THE  QUESTION  OF  CHRISTIANITY  AS  A 
WORLD  RELIGION  II:  CITIZENS  Of 
A   NEW  CIVILIZATION 

I.     Faith  in  the  Possibilities  of  a  New  Civili- 
zation     216 

II.    The  Special  Obligations  Now  Resting  upon 

America  and  America's  Youth.        .        .221 

III.  The  Demands  of  the  New  Civilization  .     224 

1 .  The  inescapable  grip  of  the  laws  of  God  in  the 

life  of  nations     ......     224 

2.  The  needed  reinvigoration  of  the  life  of  the 

nations  in  its  entire  range  .         .         .         .229 

3.  A  new  grasp  upon  the  principle  of  the  organic 

view  of  truth  and  of  human  society     .         .     236 

4.  The  new  civilization  must  be  frankly,  definitely 

Christian 239 

(i)  The  sifting  out  of  the  true  from  the  false 

Christianity 239 

(2)  The  abandonment  of  the  philosophy  of  the 

state  as  above  moral  law      .         .  .  242 

(3)  A  league  of  nations  to  enforce  peace  .  .  247 

(4)  Further  plans  for  a  permanent  peace  .  .  247 

IV.  The  Appeal  to  American  Youth     .        .  .  249 


FUNDAMENTAL   QUESTIONS 


FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  — 
THE  PERENNIAL  PROBLEM  FOR  ALL 
IDEAL  VIEWS 

I 

Preliminary  Considerations 

One  questions  his  right  to  take  this  theme 
at  all,  for  two  reasons  :  First,  because  only 
experience  of  life  can  fitly  interpret  it,  and 
without  some  depth  of  experience  discussion 
of  this  dark  problem  is  little  else  than  mock- 
ery. One  doubts  the  adequacy  of  his  experi- 
ence, and  his  capacity  to  see  and  feel  deeply 
enough  to  justify  discussion.  One  would 
not  further  darken  counsel  on  this  subject 
by  words  without  knowledge.  The  second 
reason  for  hesitation  is  just  because  the  prob- 
lem is  so  old.  It  is  in  truth  man's  perennially 
darkest  problem  —  the  question  of  the  ages  — 


2  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

that  seems  to  confront  him  with  the  constant 
and  often-stated  dilemma :  either  God  is 
good  and  not  omnipotent,  or  he  is  omnipotent 
and  not  good.  No  one  of  us  can  escape  this 
challenge.  In  some  form  it  concerns  us  all, 
whether  our  primary  interest  is  religious  or 
scientific  or  practical.  At  some  point  we  all 
need  an  assured  conviction  of  the  essential 
rationality  of  the  world  —  that  aims  that 
compel  our  respect  are  ruling  in  the  world. 
Is  it  at  all  worth  while  to  discuss  anew  this 
age-long  problem  ? 

If,  in  spite  of  this  double  misgiving,  and  with 
no  feeling  that  I  have  new  and  startling  light 
to  shed  upon  it,  I  am  undertaking  once  more 
a  sober  survey  of  this  most  difficult  problem 
of  human  existence,  it  is  simply  because  even 
the  oldest  questions  inevitably  change  their 
form  with  changing  times,  and  so  need  to  be 
reconsidered  again  and  again ;  and  because  it 
is  precisely  in  wrestling  with  our  largest  and 
darkest  problems  that  our  most  fruitful  in- 
sights are  likely  to  come.  A  comprehensive, 
even  if  sober,  resurvey  of  all  that  is  involved 
in  the  problem  of  evil,  natural  and  moral  — 
in  the  question  of  suffering  and  sin  —  ought, 
then,  to  prove  of  some  value,  especially  when 
this  problem  is  being  pressed  on  us  all  anew 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN     3 

by  the  terror  of  the  Great  War.  And  this, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  one  has  no  expectation 
of  solving  the  problem.  It  probably  was  not 
intended  that  complete  demonstration  should 
be  possible  to  us  here.  One  can  only  hope  to 
give  a  series  of  suggestions  that  may  help  to 
faith,  suggestions  which  themselves  can  be 
of  weight  chiefly  to  those  who  can  interpret 
them  out  of  their  own  experience. 

I.  From  the  start  it  is  well  to  remember 
that  we  can  know  beforehand  that  there 
can  be  no  demonstration  of  the  reasons  for 
actual  matter-of-fact  existences.  We  can- 
not demonstrate  mosquitoes  or  snakes  or 
potato  bugs.  We  cannot  demonstrate  the 
grass  or  the  grub  or  the  bird.  The  concrete 
facts  can  never  be  fully  reached  and  the 
necessity  of  their  existence  shown  by  any 
philosophy  or  any  summary  of  principles, 
however  widely  accepted.  The  most  that 
we  could  do  at  this  point  would  be  to  agree 
on  certain  great  ends  that  ought  to  prevail 
in  any  universe ;  to  infer  from  these  the 
probability  of  some  larger  necessary  laws 
(although  many  so-called  laws,  especially  in 
the  physical  world,  are  doubtless  not  primal 
necessities  at  all,  but  only  widely  prevalent 
matters  of  fact) ;    and  then  to  show  that  the 


4  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

existence  of  various   matters   of  fact  is   not 
inconsistent  with  these  ends  and  laws. 

It  was  long  ago  pointed  out  that  reality- 
has  for  all  men  three  realms  —  the  realms 
of  the  is,  of  the  must,  and  of  the  ought;  and 
we  cannot  have  any  hope  of  final  unity  in 
our  thinking,  except  as  we  start  from  the 
ought.  Quite  aside  from  any  ethical  interest, 
the  very  meaning  of  these  three  realms  of 
reality  is  such  that  we  plainly  cannot  derive 
the  ought  from  the  is  or  the  must.  That  a 
thing  is  does  not  prove  that  it  ought  to  be. 
Nor  even  that  a  thing  must  be,  does  it  follow 
that  it  ought  to  be.  We  might  have  to  regard 
it  as  an  evil  necessity.  We  mean  something 
quite  different  when  we  say  a  thing  ought 
to  be,  from  what  we  mean  when  we  say  it 
is  or  it  must  be.  If  we  are  to  get  any  final 
unity  in  our  three  realms  of  reality,  then,  it 
can  only  be  by  starting  from  the  ought,  pro- 
ceeding to  the  must,  as  involved  in  the  ends 
contained  in  the  ought,  and  accepting  the 
is  as  merely  actual,  not  demonstrable,  but 
also  not  inconsistent  with  the  ought  and  the 
must.  Our  metaphysics,  thus,  as  Lotze  and 
Paulsen  and  Wundt  all  contend,  must  root 
in  our  ethics  if  we  are  to  be  able  at  all  to 
believe  in  the  final  unity  of  the  world.     This 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN     5 

initial  consideration  —  the  necessary  primacy 
of  the  ought  for  any  unity  in  the  world  or  in 
our  own  thinking  —  is  itself  good  reason  for 
faith  that  purposes  of  good  do  rule  in  the 
world,  that  there  is  love  and  not  hate  at  the 
world's  heart. 

2.  There  is  a  further  preliminary  consid- 
eration that  may  give  us  hope  as  to  the  final 
issue  of  our  problem.  The  very  fact,  as  I 
have  elsewhere  pointed  out,  that  all  men, 
practically  without  exception,  feel  somewhere 
the  problem  of  evil  —  the  difficulty  of  the 
suffering  of  the  righteous,  of  the  prosperity 
of  the  wicked,  of  much  seemingly  needless 
suffering  —  as  well  as  the  increasing  sensi- 
tiveness at  this  point,  itself  shows  that  all 
men  instinctively  feel  and  make  the  universal 
assumption  that  a  really  rational  world  must 
be  a  world  that  is  worth  while,  a  world  that 
can  justify  itself  to  a  sensitive  and  enlightened 
conscience,  a  world  that  is  not  merely  coldly 
logical  but  warmly  loving.  The  fact  that 
men  so  universally  make  this  assumption 
is  itself  good  evidence  that  we  may  believe 
that  the  world  will  finally  justify  that  assump- 
tion. 

For  men  are  themselves  a  part,  the  last 
evolved  part,  and  at  least  a  very  important 


6  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

part  of  that  world  which  they  are  seeking 
to  understand.  They  are,  indeed,  that  part 
of  the  world  in  which  the  world  itself  has 
come  to  consciousness  and  to  intelligent  judg- 
ment. If  their  universal  assumption  is  that 
this  world  must  be  a  good  world,  as  well  as  a 
logically  consistent  world,  if  it  is  to  be  truly 
rational  and  tolerable  at  all,  then  if  that 
assumption  is  not  justified,  the  world  has 
contradicted  and  condemned  itself  in  its 
own  highest  product,  and  there  is  an  end  of 
rational  thinking.  For  you  cannot  rationally 
think  through  a  world  fundamentally  irra- 
tional. In  that  case,  the  fact  of  the  human 
mind  and  the  fact  of  the  rest  of  the  world 
do  not  fit,  and  cannot  be  made  to  fit.  You 
could  then  only  accept  the  universe  in  its 
entirety  as  a  self-contradictory  and  evil 
thing,  and  utterly  abandon  any  attempt 
to  think  it  into  unity.  That  would  mean 
an  end  of  rational  thinking  and  of  all  phi- 
losophy, to  say  nothing  of  religion.  And 
such  a  futile  and  chaotic  outcome  is  itself 
a  reason  for  faith  that  the  contrary  view, 
the  view  that  all  men  assume  as  essential 
to  a  rational  world,  is  justified.  In  spite  of 
seeming  contradictions,  the  world  probably 
bears  true  witness  to  itself  in  men's  instinctive 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN      7 

demand  upon  the  world  and  upon  life.  A 
controlling  love,  we  may  believe,  is  at  work 
in  the  world.  There  is,  then,  some  initial 
rational  presumption  that  our  problem  is  not 
insoluble. 

3.  One  subordinate  aspect  of  the  problem 
of  suffering  —  the  suffering  in  the  animal 
world  —  has  been  much  accentuated  in  our 
modern  time,  for  two  reasons  :  first,  because 
with  the  progress  of  Christian  civilization 
the  sensitiveness  to  all  suffering,  even  animal 
suffering,  has  greatly  increased.  And,  sec- 
ondly, because  the  tendency  of  the  Darwinian 
theory  of  evolution  was  to  formulate  all  de- 
velopment in  terms  of  "the  struggle  for 
existence,"  and  so  to  seem  to  most  minds 
to  involve  a  terrible  severity  in  the  condi- 
tions under  which  life  evolved,  and  a  cease- 
less preying  of  animals  upon  one  another. 

As  to  this  whole  question  of  animal  suffer- 
ing, it  seems  clear  to  me,  in  the  first  place, 
that,  even  if  the  Darwinian  theory  of  evolu- 
tion be  fully  accepted,  the  facts  would  by 
no  means  warrant  many  of  the  statements 
made  concerning  the  cruelty  and  pain  of 
the  struggle.  The  word  struggle  itself  — 
as  applied  to  the  whole  biological  field  — 
tends  to  mislead.     Surely  we  may  well  give 


8  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

heed  at  this  point  to  the  testimony  of  Darwin 
and  Wallace  themselves,  as  quoted  by  Drum- 
mond.     Darwin  says  : 

When  we  reflect  on  this  struggle,  we  may  console  our- 
selves with  the  full  belief  that  the  war  of  nature  is  not 
incessant,  that  no  fear  is  felt,  that  death  is  generally 
prompt,  and  that  the  vigorous,  the  healthy,  and  the 
happy  survive  and  multiply. 

And  Wallace  expresses  himself  even  more 
explicitly : 

On  the  whole,  the  popular  idea  of  the  struggle  for 
existence  entailing  misery  and  pain  in  the  animal  world 
is  the  very  reverse  of  the  truth.  What  it  really  brings 
about  is  the  maximum  of  life  and  of  the  enjoyment  of 
life,  with  the  minimum  of  suffering  and  pain.  Given 
the  necessity  of  death  and  reproduction  —  and  without 
these  there  could  have  been  no  progressive  development 
of  the  organic  world  —  and  it  is  difficult  even  to  imagine 
a  system  by  which  a  greater  balance  of  happiness  could 
have  been  secured. 

Moreover,  with  continued  study  of  the  prob- 
lem of  evolution  on  the  part  of  men  of  all 
schools,  it  is  significant  that  there  has  been 
a  marked  recognition  that  there  can  be  no 
such  exclusive  emphasis  upon  the  struggle 
for  existence,  but  that  other  factors  have  a 
large  part  to  play.  Thus,  scientists  are 
themselves  insisting,  to  a  larger  extent  than 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN     9 

when  John  Fiske  wrote  the  words,  that 
"other  agencies  are  at  work  besides  natural 
selection,  and  the  story  of  the  struggle  for 
existence  is  far  from  being  the  whole  story." 
And  the  recognition  of  "these  other  agencies" 
greatly  modifies  the  former  impression,  itself 
unjustified,  of  a  pitiless  and  bloody  warfare 
involving  exquisite  animal  anguish  at  every 
step.     In  the  words  of  Thomson  and  Geddes  : 

There  Is  no  doubt  that  the  general  tone  and  treat- 
ment of  Darwinism,  even  hitherto,  has  been  deeply 
coloured  by  the  acute  individualism  of  Darwin's  and 
the  preceding  age.  We  may  therefore  restate  here 
the  concluding  thesis  of  our  own  Evolution  of  Sex  (1889), 
since  elaborated  in  various  ways  by  Drummond,  by 
Kropotkin  and  others.  It  is  that  the  general  progress 
both  of  the  plant  and  th'e  animal  world,  and  notably 
the  great  uplifts,  must  be  viewed  not  simply  as  Individ- 
ual but  very  largely  In  terms  of  sex  and  parenthood, 
of  family  and  association ;  and  hence  of  gregarious 
flocks  and  herds,  of  co-operative  packs,  of  evolving 
tribes,  and  thus  ultimately  of  civilized  societies  —  above 
all,  therefore,  of  the  city.  Huxley's  tragic  vision  of 
"Nature  as  a  gladiatorial  show,"  and  consequently  of 
ethical  life  and  progress  as  merely  superposed  by  man, 
as  therefore  an  Interference  with  the  normal  order  of 
Nature,  Is  still  far  too  dominant  among  us. 

There  is,  indeed,  every  reason  to  believe 
that    the    method    of    animal    development 


lO  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

chosen,  costly  as  it  undoubtedly  is,  was  the 
least  costly  in  pain ;  and  that,  in  any  case, 
the  goal  was  worth  the  price  paid.  We  have 
small  reason  to  doubt  that  life  itself  for  the 
animal  involves  general  pleasure ;  and  the 
aim  in  creation  seems  to  have  been,  as  Lotze 
has  pointed  out,  to  crowd  each  least  cranny 
of  the  world  with  life  and  the  joy  of  life. 

The  naturally  growing  sensitiveness  to 
suffering  has  been  further  accentuated  in 
our  time,  I  must  believe,  by  a  falsely  senti- 
mental view  of  the  animal  world,  that  has 
led  us  to  attribute  to  them  sufferings  that 
they  pretty  certainly  do  not  have.  There 
has  been  much  exaggeration  at  this  point. 
Men  have  naturally  enough  made  themselves 
the  standard  for  judging  of  suffering,  and 
so  have  forgotten  that  even  the  highest  ani- 
mals have  quite  certainly  a  less  sensitive  ner- 
vous system  than  we,  while  the  lower  animal 
forms  are  almost  out  of  comparison  with  men 
in  this  respect. 

Still  less  may  we  attribute  to  the  animal 
world  our  mental  sufferings  and  anxieties. 
Lacking  all  clear  self-consciousness,  animals 
suffer  neither  from  memory  nor  from  an- 
ticipation as  do  men.  The  popular  animal 
stories  have  here  much  to  answer  for.     One 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN     ii 

feels  indignant  at  the  amount  of  entirely 
groundless  suffering  that  has  thus  been  caused 
many  persons  by  the  assumption  that  there 
must  be  transferred  to  the  animal  world  suf- 
fering that  is  to  be  found  only  among  human 
beings.  There  is  suffering  enough  among 
men  in  any  case.  Gratuitously  to  increase 
it  is  inexcusable.  And  men  need  not  carry 
the  load  that  comes  from  the  thought  of 
constant  mental  anguish  among  animals. 

Moreover,  one  may  well  protest  against 
such  false  animal  psychology  —  glad  as  he 
may  be  to  help  every  movement  to  relieve 
physical  pain  among  animals  —  because  the 
ascription  of  mental  suffering  to  animals 
tends  to  draw  attention  away  from  the 
undoubted  and  far  greater  suffering  of  men, 
due  to  remediable  conditions.  In  general, 
there  is  surely  good  reason  to  believe  that 
pleasure  in  the  animal  world  far  outweighs 
pain ;  and  that  the  organic  world  below  man 
certainly  holds  no  presumption  that  a  cruel, 
heedless  power  is  dominating  the  processes 
of  evolution. 


12  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

II 

The  Prerequisites  of  Moral  Character 

Passing,  now,  to  our  main  problem  —  that 
of  suffering  and  sin  among  men  —  it  seems 
clear  that  any  discussion  of  this  question  is 
useless  that  does  not,  first  of  all,  make  plain 
the  prerequisites  of  moral  character,  the 
inevitable  prerequisites  that  the  world  may 
be  a  sphere  for  moral  training  and  action. 
For  our  whole  problem  is  an  ethical  one.  It 
is  for  moral  reasons  that  we  feel  its  pressure. 
The  point  of  our  doubt,  indeed,  is  simply 
whether  the  world  can  meet  the  demands  of 
a  sensitive  and  enlightened  conscience.  Our 
very  problem  assumes,  then,  the  final  and 
intrinsic  value  of  moral  ends.  We  must  ask 
from  the  world  that  it  make  character  and 
growth  in  character  at  least  possible.  We 
can  only  play  with  our  problem,  therefore, 
if  we  are  unwilling  to  make  explicit  to  our- 
selves those  prerequisites  that  must  be  ful- 
filled if  the  world  is  to  be  a  sphere  for  moral 
training  and  action. 

I  can  only  answer,  of  course,  for  myself. 
These  necessary  prerequisites  seem  to  me  to 
be  six  :  ^  some  genuine  freedom  of  volition  on 

^  Cf.  Theology  and  the  Social  Consciousness,  pp.  30-32. 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN     13 

man's  part ;  some  power  of  accomplishment 
In  the  direction  of  the  volition ;  an  imperfect 
developing  environment ;  a  sphere  of  laws ; 
that  men  should  be  members  one  of  another; 
and  that  there  should  be  struggle  against 
resistance.  Now  every  one  of  these  six 
prerequisites,  it  should  be  noted,  Involves 
the  possibility  of  resulting  suffering,  and  most 
of  them,  the  possibility  of  sin.  It  is  this 
paradox,  therefore,  which  confronts  us  :  That 
the  world  may  be  one  that  we  can  approve, 
it  must  contain  conditions  that  involve  the 
possibility  at  least  of  suffering  and  sin  that 
we  cannot  approve.  Character  is  an  im- 
mensely costly  product.  We  are  not  able 
even  to  imagine  any  way  by  which  it  can  be 
cheaply  produced.  The  degree  of  final  satis- 
faction as  to  the  solution  of  the  problem  of 
evil,  therefore,  will  probably  depend  upon 
how  deeply  valuable  character  seems  to  us 
to  be.  If  it  seems  to  us  of  Infinite  worth, 
we  shall  not  grudge  the  cost,  but  justify  the 
process. 

I.  Let  us  look,  then,  at  these  prerequisites, 
if  the  world  is  to  be  a  sphere  of  moral  training 
and  action.  And,  first,  there  must  be,  for 
the  very  possibility  of  character  in  man, 
some  genuine  freedom  of   volition  on  man's 


14  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

part.  I  do  not  purpose  to  reargue  the  old 
question  of  freedom.  The  will  seems  to  me 
not  comparable  with  anything  else.  I  only 
have  to  say  for  myself  that  I  share  James's 
feeling,  that  if  there  be  no  power  of  genuine 
initiative  in  man,  however  limited  in  scope 
(as  in  unforced  direction  of  attention,  or  in 
retaining  of  the  passing  thought  for  an  in- 
stant, or  in  simple  approval  or  disapproval), 
life  would  be  like  "the  dull  rattling  off  of  a 
chain  that  was  forged  innumerable  ages  ago." 
I  find  myself  unable  to  conceive  of  character 
as  a  reality,  or  as  in  any  vital  sense  uniquely 
man's  own  and  not  a  mechanical  product  of 
outside,  wholly  unmoral  forces,  unless  there 
be  this  incomparable  power  of  freedom. 
Eucken's  and  Bergson's  new  emphasis  on 
the  will  seems  to  me,  therefore,  a  sane  reac- 
tion from  a  too  prevalent  necessitarianism. 
I  cannot  see  that  character  and  moral  prob- 
lems have  any  meaning  as  such,  without  a 
clear  recognition  of  freedom.  One  cannot 
have  both  mechanical  explanation  and  moral 
freedom  at  the  same  time  and  at  the  same 
point.  He  must  pay  the  price  of  a  freedom 
that  is  not  a  play-freedom  but  real  through 
and  through.  That  there  might  be  char- 
acter at  all,  then,  in  the  world,   men  must 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN     15 

be  not  only  self-conscious,  but  have  the  power 
of  moral  initiative.  And  for  God  this  meant 
a  certain  divine  self-limitation,  and  for  men 
the  possibility  of  choosing  against  God  — 
the  possibility  of  sin.  This  terrible  possi- 
bility is  the  necessary  price  of  free  sons  of 
God,  who  were  free  to  choose  to  do  his  will. 

I  see  no  conceivable  way  of  accounting 
for  error  and  for  sin  in  the  world  without  mak- 
ing God  directly  responsible  for  both,  if 
genuine  creative  freedom  is  not  assigned  to 
man.  We  must  be  dead  in  earnest  as  to 
man's  real  initiative,  if  we  are  to  solve  the 
problem  of  suffering  and  sin.  As  Bowne 
says,  concerning  error,  ^' every  system  of 
philosophy  must  invoke  freedom  for  the 
solution  of  the  problem  of  error  or  make 
shipwreck  of  reason  itself."  ^  James  vividly 
sets  forth  the  same  difficulty  as  to  sin  :  ^ 

When,  for  example,  I  imagine  such  carrion  as  the 
Brockton  murder,  I  cannot  conceive  it  as  an  act  by 
which  the  universe,  as  a  whole,  logically  and  necessarily 
expresses  its  nature  without  shrinking  from  complicity 
with  such  a  whole.  And  I  deliberately  refuse  to  keep 
on  terms  of  loyalty  with  the  universe  by  saying  blankly 
that  the  murder,  since  it  does  flow  from  the  nature  of 

^  Theory  of  Thought  and  Knowledge,  p.  244. 
2  The  Will  to  Believe,  p.  177. 


i6  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

the  whole,  is  not  carrion.  There  are  some  instinctive 
reactions  which  I,  for  one,  will  not  tamper  with. 

On  the  completely  deterministic  theory,  every 
fact,  however  horrible,  must  be  regarded  as 
a  necessary  step  in  the  development  of  the 
universe ;  in  other  words,  from  the  religious 
point  of  view,  God  is  absolutely  and  directly 
responsible.  If,  then,  we  are  to  be  able  to 
keep  our  faith  at  all  in  the  broad  rationality 
of  the  universe,  we  must  assume  man's  real 
freedom. 

2.  Nor  could  there  be  denied  to  man, 
with  volition,  some  power  of  accomplishment 
in  the  direction  of  his  volition ;  though  this 
involves  the  possibility  of  suffering  on  his  own 
part  and  on  that  of  others.  This  power 
of  accomplishment  may  be  decidedly  limited, 
but  it  must  be  there.  To  grant  man  a  mere 
resultless  volition  must  be  felt  to  be,  as  Lotze 
suggests,  "sophistical."  Some  results  of  our 
volition  are  needed  to  make  our  act  real  and 
to  reveal  the  character  of  it  even  to  ourselves 
and  to  others.  Man's  whole  being  calls 
for  such  expressive  activity,  if  there  is  to  be 
any  "realizing  sense"  of  the  meaning  of  inner 
states.  This,  then,  is  one  answer  to  the 
natural  question,  Why  was  not  the  world 
so   made   that   only   good    designs    could    be 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN     17 

carried  out,  or  that  evil  volitions  would  be 
at  once  frustrated  ?  The  volition  is  truly 
revealed  only  in  the  light  of  its  logical  conse- 
quences, and  the  worst  of  these  are  in  the 
realm  of  personal  relations.  A  world  in 
which  that  was  impossible  would  seem,  then, 
to  be  no  fit  world  for  the  moral  training  of  a 
finite  developing  creation.  Ethical  consider- 
ations must  decide  here.  Life  cannot  be  a 
play.  It  can  certainly  be  no  farce.  Both 
God  and  man  must  be  in  dead  earnest  with 
the  fact  of  freedom. 

3.  An  imperfect  developing  world,  there- 
fore, in  the  sense  of  a  world  in  which  many 
things  may  occur,  because  of  men's  choices, 
which  in  and  of  themselves  ought  not  to  be, 
is  needed  for  the  development  of  moral  char- 
acter in  man.  Even  those  other  natural 
imperfections  that  belong  to  an  earth  in  pro- 
cess probably  make  an  actually  more  suit- 
able environment  for  a  creature  developing 
toward  character  than  a  world  conceived  on 
more  final  lines.  An  Imperfect  developing 
world  is  fitted  to  an  imperfect  developing 
man.  The  imperfect  here  is  the  more  perfect. 
Such  a  world  calls  out  man's  powers,  chal- 
lenges him  to  achievement,  stimulates  him  to 
moral  purposes,  trains  him  in  moral  action. 


1 8  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

4.  But  it  may  be  felt  that  while  doubtless 
the  granting  to  a  man  of  resultless  volition 
would  be  sophistical  and  futile,  at  least  the 
results  might  be  confined  to  the  man  himself. 
And  it  is  with  this  difficulty  that  the  still 
more  fundamental  fourth  prerequisite  of  a 
moral  world  has  to  do :  that  men  should  be 
members  one  of  another.  Of  the  fact  there 
is  no  manner  of  doubt.  Ought  it  to  be  a 
fact .? 

Now  It  is  quite  conceivable  that  men  might 
have  come  into  being  quite  independently  of 
one  another,  and  be  in  as  absolute  isolation 
as  Leibnitz'  "windowless  monads,"  or  as  the 
chemical  processes  going  on  in  a  multitude  of 
utterly  disconnected  test-tubes.  It  would  be 
a  more  than  Robinson  Crusoe-like  existence, 
with  no  personal  relations  either  in  memory 
or  in  vaguest  anticipation ;  though  a  shadowy 
kind  of  purely  individualistic  morality  would 
be  still  conceivable.  In  such  a  world  the  re- 
sults of  the  processes  in  one  individual  could 
not  in  the  least  extend  themselves  to  others. 
Would  it  be  a  better  world,  a  world  that  we 
ourselves  would  prefer  ^ 

We  can  at  least  see  that  all  that  we  most 
prize  in  this  world  would  be  absent  in  that, 
even  though  certain  evils  would  have  van- 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN     19 

ished  also.  Such  a  world  could  not  be  prop- 
erly called  a  universe  at  all/  There  would 
be  as  many  absolutely  independent  worlds 
as  there  were  individuals.  Unless  relations, 
at  least  of  knowledge,  were  admitted,  there 
could  apparently  be  no  significant  enlarge- 
ment of  life.  There  would  be  no  need  by 
one  life  of  another,  and  no  possibility  of 
service.  All  the  possibilities  of  personal  rela- 
tions —  of  friendships  —  would  be  cut  off. 
Love  would  have  no  meaning;  and,  indeed, 
so  far  from  being  the  sum  of  virtue,  it  could 
have  no  existence.  Anything  that  could 
conceivably  be  called  a  moral  universe,  with 
all  the  infinite  and  endless  significance  that 
that  fact  contains,  would  have  utterly  ceased. 
That  would  seem  to  be  the  world  we  must 
have,  if  we  are  to  insist  that  results  of  an 
individual's  conduct  are  to  be  confined  to  the 
individual  himself. 

In  other  words,  the  very  possibility  of  such 
a  moral  universe,  as  we  know  and  feel  the 
need  of,  demands  that  we  shall  be  members 
one  of  another,  knit  up  indissolubly  with 
other  lives,  with  all  that  that  involves. 
But  in  such  a  world  the  results  of  conduct 
must  register  themselves  chiefly  in  personal 
relations.     Where  wrong   choices   are   made. 


20  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

we  can  cause  and  be  caused  suffering.  Those 
personal  relations  in  which  lie  the  most 
exquisite  joys  of  life  contain  inevitably  like 
possibilities  of  pain.  Sin  thus  necessarily 
carries  suffering  with  it,  even  the  suffering 
of  the  innocent.  The  world  is  not  a  play- 
world.  But  it  should  be  remembered  in 
exactly  this  connection  that  this  very  fact 
of  our  inevitable  membership  in  one  another 
is  one  of  the  greatest  of  all  restraints  from 
moral  evil,  and  one  of  the  greatest  motives 
to  good. 

5.  Once  more,  that  the  world  may  be  a 
sphere  of  moral  training  and  action  there 
must  be  a  sphere  of  laws  in  the  structure  of 
the  world,  on  whose  operation  men  may 
steadily  count.  Such  a  sphere  of  laws  is 
not  only  not  opposed  to  freedom,  but  is 
necessary  to  give  to  freedom  any  field  of 
action ;  for  the  possibility  of  all  growth  and 
accomplishment  in  knowledge,  in  power,  and 
in  character  depends  upon  it.  This  implies 
that  character  is  a  becoming,  a  growth,  an 
accomplishing  on  the  part  of  each  individual ; 
and  cannot  possibly  be  inherited  or  passively 
received.  It  can  realize  itself  only  as  it 
sets  worthy  goals  and  works  toward  these 
goals.     But   such    a   sphere   of   laws  —  while 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN     21 

It  alone  can  save  us  from  the  wild  chaos  and 
resultlessness  of  a  lawless  world  —  does  neces- 
sarily involve  also  the  possibility  of  much 
suffering,  and  of  suffering  not  due  to  sin,  prop- 
erly so  called,  but  to  ignorance  of  the  laws 
of  nature.  Such  suffering  is  not  properly 
to  be  regarded  as  punishment,  or  as  ''sent 
by  God."  It  needs,  as  LeConte  says,  only 
knowledge  of  and  conformity  to  law. 

6.  And  finally,  as  to  the  prerequisites  of 
moral  character,  we  know  no  way  of  growth 
in  character  that  does  not  involve  struggle, 
resistance,  repeated  choosing  of  the  right 
against  the  solicitation  of  the  wrong.  This 
is  quite  in  line  with  the  psychological  fact, 
that  man  is  made,  in  every  fiber  of  his  being, 
for  action ;  that  his  ideas  and  ideals  become 
truly  his,  only  through  increasingly  complete 
expression  of  them  in  work.  And  the  im- 
perfect developing  world  of  which  we  have 
spoken,  on  this  very  account,  becomes  a 
peculiarly  good  world  for  moral  training. 

So  that  we  may  well  believe  with  Martineau 
that  even  ''the  ills  of  life  are  not  here  on  their 
own  account,  but  are  as  a  divine  challenge  and 
Godlike  wrestling  in  the  night  with  our  too 
reluctant  wills."  This  need  of  struggle  and 
resistance  seems  to  be  an  inevitable  law  of 


22  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

life.  Growth  and  discipline  of  character  re- 
quire it.  And  it  is  this  law  that  Browning 
makes  the  old  rabbi  so  effectively  voice  : 

Then,  welcome  each  rebuff 
That  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough, 
Each  sting  that  bids  nor  sit  nor  stand,  but  go ! 
Be  our  joys  three  parts  pain  ! 
Strive,  and  hold  cheap  the  strain ; 
Learn,  nor  account  the  pang;  dare,  never  grudge 
the  throe ! 

For  thence,  —  a  paradox 
Which  comforts  while  it  mocks,  — 
Shall  life  succeed  in  that  it  seems  to  fail : 
What  I  aspired  to  be. 
And  was  not,  comforts  me : 

A  brute  I  might  have  been,  but  would  not  sink  i' 
the  scale. 

Must  this  necessity  of  struggle  and  resist- 
ance be  still  called  a  psychological  defect 
in  our  natures  ^  The  question  may  indeed 
be  raised.  But  once  more  it  seems  fairly 
clear  that,  so  far  as  human  insight  is  able  to 
go,  one  is  obliged  to  conclude  that  if  the  con- 
ditions were  otherwise,  it  would  be  only  a 
play-world  in  which  we  live;  that  character 
is  too  stern  a  thing  for  one  pleasantly  to 
drift  into ;  and  that  a  good  that  could  be  so 
achieved  would  seem  to  us  too  cheap  a  goal, 
quite   unworthy   of   our   steel.     The    heroes, 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN     23 

some    one    has    insisted,  are   those  who    can 
stand  the  world  as  it  is. 

It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  the  whole 
solution  of  the  problem  of  evil  depends  pri- 
marily upon  a  proper  estimation  of  the  pre- 
requisites that  are  necessary  to  the  develop- 
ment of  moral  character.  For  the  man  who 
clearly  sees  what  those  prerequisites  are, 
and  what  possibilities  of  suffering  and  sin 
they  involve,  and  who  believes  at  the  same 
time  in  the  infinite  value  of  character,  will 
find  in  these  very  facts  a  comprehensive 
answer  to  his  questioning. 

Ill 

Help    from    the    Common    Deeper    Life 
OF  Men 

In  attempting  frankly  to  face  the  perennial 
problem  of  evil,  we  have  been  dealing  hitherto 
with  what  might  all  be  called  preliminary 
considerations,  in  order  to  be  sure  that  the 
sweep  and  conditions  of  the  problem  itself 
were  correctly  conceived.  For  there  is  plainly 
no  cheap  and  easy  solution  of  this  question. 
Men  have  been  universally  occupied  with  it 
through  the  centuries,  just  because  there 
are  so  many  phenomena  that  seem  to  deny 


24  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

a  purpose  of  love  in  the  world.  No  mere 
reexamination  of  individual  phenomena,  then, 
will  meet  the  case.  We  must  make  plain 
to  ourselves  that  personal  character  is  the 
only  aim  that  will  finally  satisfy  our  thought ; 
and  we  have  seen  that  that  goal,  in  the  na- 
ture of  the  case,  carries  v/ith  it  large  possi- 
bilities of  sin  and  suffering.  We  might  ex- 
pect, therefore,  to  find  in  the  world  many 
facts  that  would  seem  to  deny  a  God  of  love. 
The  solution  of  our  whole  problem  lies  funda- 
mentally just  here. 

But  it  is  abundantly  worth  while  to  see 
that  there  is  a  mass  of  corroborating  evidence 
that  may  confirm  our  faith  in  the  goodness 
of  God.  We  have  already  found  that  cer- 
tain important  and  practically  inevitable 
trends  of  our  natures  encourage  the  hope 
that  the  problem  is  not  insoluble.  And  there 
were  reasons  to  believe,  too,  that  the  partic- 
ular fact  of  animal  suffering  raised  no  insu- 
perable difficulty. 

With  the  present  section  we  turn  to  seek 
such  help  as  may  come  from  the  common 
deeper  life  of  men.  For  there  are  certain 
great  considerations  that  have  made  a  uni- 
versal appeal  to  men  who  have  had  some 
depth    of    moral    and    reflective    life.     And 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN     25 

they  are  considerations  that  deserve  still 
to  weigh  with  each  individual,  wrestling 
anew  with  man's  darkest  problem. 

I.  First  of  all,  it  has  probably  never 
escaped  thoughtful  men  that  their  vision 
was  greatly  limited.  The  smallness  of  man's 
view  cannot  be  ignored.  The  facts  surveyed, 
the  region  within  their  knowledge,  the  data 
in  any  way  at  their  command,  were  all  too 
severely  restricted  to  make  an  adequate 
judgment  possible.  Sometimes  this  has  been 
asserted  in  humble  faith,  and  sometimes 
in  skeptical  rebellion ;  but,  whether  in  one 
way  or  the  other,  men  have  had  to  own 
that  they  did  not  have  sufficient  data  to 
judge  the  ways  of  God.  It  has  remained 
always  possible  that  a  few  additional  facts 
would  quite  change  the  seeming  of  things. 
We  cannot  judge  the  building,  men  have 
habitually  urged  with  themselves,  while  the 
scaffolding  is  up.  The  world  is  too  large,  time 
and  space  too  great,  for  our  reach.  Moreover, 
the  world  is  in  process ;  we  can  judge  it  only 
in  the  light  of  the  final  goal. 

Does  this  consideration  still  deserve  to 
weigh  with  thoughtful  men  to-day  ^  There  is 
a   curious    passage   in    Lotze's  Microcosmus,^ 

1  Vol.  II,  p.  716. 


26  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

in  which,  in  a  fashion,  he  seems  to  turn  this 
attempted  answer  into  a  further  objection, 
in  his  desire  to  deal  with  utter  honesty  with 
the  problem  of  evil : 

It  may  be  said  that  evil  appears  only  in  particulars, 
and  that  when  we  take  a  comprehensive  view  of  the 
great  whole  it  disappears  ;  but  of  what  use  is  a  consola- 
tion the  power  of  which  depends  upon  the  arrangement 
of  clauses  in  a  sentence  ?  For  what  becomes  of  our 
consolation,  if  we  convert  the  sentence  which  contains 
it  thus  :  The  world  is  indeed  harmonious  as  a  whole, 
but  if  we  look  nearer  it  is  full  of  misery  ? 

But  one  wonders  if,  after  all,  this  would  not 
be  a  bit  too  ingenious,  if  it  were  intended  to 
set  aside  the  help  coming  from  the  consider- 
ation of  the  smallness  of  our  view.  So  under- 
stood, it  would  certainly  be  inconsistent  with 
some  of  Lotze's  own  deepest  convictions. 
For  example,  he  reminds  us  elsewhere  that 
the  view-point  does  make  a  vast  and  inevi- 
table difference.  Wherever  purposes  are  being 
worked  out  at  all,  there  one  must  have,  for 
any  final  judgment,  knowledge  of  the  ends 
sought.     And  so  we  find  him  saying : 

Only  if,  standing  in  the  creative  centre  of  the 
universe,  we  could  fully  scan  the  thought  whence  it  has 
sprung,  could  we  from  it  foretell  the  destinies  of  the 
individual  called  to  contribute  to  its  realization ;    this 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN     27 

we  cannot  do  from  our  human  point  of  view  that  brings 
us  face  to  face  not  with  the  Creator  and  His  purposes, 
but  only  with  the  created.  .  .  .  We  stand  neither  in 
our  knowing  nor  in  our  acting  at  the  motionless  centre 
of  the  universe,  but  at  the  farthest  extremities  of  its 
structure,  loud  with  the  whirl  of  machinery;  and  the 
impatient  longing  that  seeks  to  escape  thence  to  the 
centre  should  beware  of  thinking  lightly  of  the  serious- 
ness and  magnitude  of  conditions  under  whose  sway  an 
irrevocable  decree  has  placed  our  finite  life.^ 

And  indeed,  he  is  himself  inclined  to  urge 
this  necessary  modesty  of  our  speculation 
as  a  chief  consideration  in  what  we  may  say 
concerning  the  problem  of  evil :  ^ 

I  have  never  cherished  an  assurance  that  speculation 
possesses  secret  means  of  going  back  to  the  beginning  of 
all  reality,  of  looking  on  at  its  genesis  and  growth,  and 
of  determining  beforehand  the  necessary  direction  of 
its  movement;  it  seems  to  me  that  philosophy  is  the 
endeavor  of  the  human  mind,  after  this  wonderful  world 
has  come  into  existence  and  we  in  it,  to  work  its  way 
back  in  thought  and  bring  the  facts  of  outer  and  of 
inner  experience  into  connection,  as  far  as  our  present 
position  in  the  world  allows. 

It  is  natural,  therefore,  that  he  should  urge :  ^ 

Let  us  therefore  alter  a  little  the  canon  of  Leibnitz, 
and  say  that  where  there  appears  to  be  an  irreconcilable 

1  Microcosmus,  Vol.  I,  pp.  388,  400. 

2  Op.  cit.,  Vol.  II,  p.  717. 

3  Op.  cit.j  Vol.  II,  p.  717. 


28  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

contradiction  between  the  omnipotence  and  the  good- 
ness of  God,  there  our  finite  wisdom  has  come  to  the  end 
of  its  tether,  and  that  we  do  not  understand  the  solution 
which  yet  we  believe  in. 

I  cannot  doubt,  myself,  that  we  may  still 
well  emphasize  with  ourselves  the  smallness 
of  our  view.  Even  in  judging  human  con- 
duct, we  find  how  often  our  appraisal  has 
been  utterly  changed  by  the  knowledge  of 
a  few  additional  facts,  or  by  some  further 
glimpse  into  intentions.  How  much  more, 
even  without  explanation,  might  one  reason- 
ably conclude  that  in  judging  the  ways  of 
God  his  highest  wisdom  would  be,  like  the 
patriarch  of  old,  to  lay  his  hand  upon  his 
mouth  and  keep  silence- 
Moreover,  if  this  consideration  ever  de- 
served to  weigh  with  men,  one  might  think 
it  deserves  to  weigh  still  more  now.  The 
world  has  been  so  infinitely  enlarged  for  our 
time,  by  modern  science,  in  space  and  in 
time  and  in  energy,  that  humility  never 
more  became  men.  I  wonder  increasingly 
whether  an  illustration  of  my  own  old  theo- 
logical instructor  was  exaggerated  after  all. 
He  said  that  an  insect  crawling  up  a  column 
of  the  Parthenon,  painfully  making  its  way 
around  some  pore  in  the  stone,  was  as  well 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN     29 

fitted  to  judge  of  the  architecture  of  the 
Parthenon  as  we,  of  the  infinitude  of  God's 
plans.  It  may  reasonably  be  that  much 
that  seems  to  us  quite  inexplicable  would 
fall  easily  into  its  fit  place,  if  only  we  could 
stand  at  the  center  with  God  and  see  his 
full  purpose  working  itself  out  in  all  crea- 
tion. 

2.  But  modern  science  not  only  contains 
an  argument  for  humility.  In  the  immensely 
longer  stretches  of  time  and  space  which  it 
opens  out  to  men,  it  brings  real  relief  to 
thoughtful  souls  by  throwing  some  additional 
light  upon  the  probable  trend  of  the  world's 
development.  Similar  light  has  come  from 
a  greatly  enlarged  historical  perspective.  In 
the  light  of  evolution  we  can  survey  a  far 
longer  period,  and  can  see  what  appears  to 
be  a  "dramatic  tendency";  and  the  goal 
to  be  achieved  seems  to  be  worth  its  cost. 
Evolution  may  thus  be  said  to  give  to  men 
the  vision  of  a  larger  portion  of  the  world's 
orbit  in  the  inorganic,  organic,  and  historic, 
and  so  to  enable  men  better  to  estimate 
what  kind  of  a  curve  it  is  to  describe.  While 
we  still  feel  keenly  the  smallness  of  our  view, 
there  is  given  at  the  same  time,  thus,  some 
added  insight  into  the  direction  of  the  pur- 


30  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

pose  of  God,  and  so  some  better  possibility 
of  judging  of  the  meaning  of  the  whole  pro- 
cess, and  of  even  consciously  and  intelli- 
gently cooperating  with  God  in  the  carrying 
out  of  his  purposes.  So  John  Fiske  feels 
that  he  is  justified  in  contending  that  the 
"cosmic  process  exists  purely  for  the  sake 
of  moral  ends,"  and  in  asserting  "the  omni- 
present ethical  trend"  of  the  universe: 

Though  in  many  ways  God's  work  Is  above  our 
comprehension,  yet  those  parts  of  the  world's  story 
that  we  can  decipher  well  warrant  the  belief  that  while 
in  Nature  there  may  be  divine  irony,  there  can  be  no 
such  thing  as  wanton  mockery,  for  profoundly  under- 
lying the  surface  entanglement  of  her  actions  we  may 
discern  the  omnipresent  ethical  trend.  The  moral 
sentiments,  the  moral  law,  devotion  to  unselfish  ends, 
disinterested  love,  nobility  of  soul  —  these  are  Nature's 
most  highly  wrought  products,  latest  in  coming  to 
maturity ;  they  are  the  consummation  toward  which 
all  earlier  prophecy  has  pointed.  We  are  right,  then, 
in  greeting  the  rejuvenescent  summer  with  devout 
faith  and  hope.  Below  the  surface  din  and  clashing 
of  the  struggle  for  life  we  hear  the  undertone  of  the 
deep  ethical  purpose,  as  it  rolls  in  solemn  music  through 
the  ages,  its  volume  swelled  by  every  victory,  great  or 
small,  of  right  over  wrong,  till  in  the  fulness  of  time,  in 
God's  own  time,  it  shall  burst  forth  in  the  triumphant' 
chorus  of  Humanity  purified  and  redeemed.^ 

*  Through  Nature  to  God,  p.  129. 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN     31 

3.  More  important  than  the  immediate 
help  derived  from  either  of  the  considera- 
tions already  named  is  the  help  from  man's 
faith  in  immortality.  Indeed,  it  is  hardly 
too  much  to  say  that  we  should  be  obliged 
to  give  up  any  solution  of  the  problem  of 
evil,  if  faith  in  immortality  were  impossible. 
No  supposed  substitutes  for  immortality  seem 
to  me  at  all  to  suffice  at  this  point.  They 
must  appear  only  "words,  words,"  to  the 
souls  wrested  away  from  a  noble  friendship. 
Nor  does  this  imply  an  essentially  pessimistic 
view  of  life.  Indeed,  one  might  be  quite 
ready  to  say  with  Le  Gallienne  :  "Man  is 
born  to  be  in  love  with  life,  and  in  spite  of 
all  the  sorrow  that  life  brings  along  with 
its  joy,  it  is  only  an  occasional  pessimist 
here  and  there  that  becomes  estranged  from 
it.  The  saddest  will  usually  admit  that  it 
has  been  good  to  live."  Still,  one  would 
have,  even  in  that  conviction,  no  sufficient 
answer  to  the  problem  of  evil.  It  is  just 
because  men  are  made  on  so  large  a  plan, 
with  such  capacity  for  endless  growth,  that 
we  do  not  know  how  to  harmonize  with  the 
wisdom  and  goodness  of  God  the  abrupt 
snuffing  out  of  their  lives.  The  more  life 
means,  the  deeper  its  joys,   the  more  inex- 


32  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

plicable  is  its  utter  ending.  The  goal  which 
the  universe  has  reached  in  man  seems  too 
great  and  too  precious,  and  its  cost  too 
inestimable,  to  make  rational  or  right  the 
flinging  aside  of  human  lives  into  the  waste 
heap  of  the  world.  We  cannot,  then,  solve 
our  problem  at  all,  if  we  may  not  keep  our 
faith  in  immortality.  It  is  because  we  can 
believe  that  this  life  is  only  a  fragment  of 
a  larger  whole,  that  we  can  still  keep  our  faith 
in  the  love  of  God. 

It  is  a  fact  most  remarkable,  when  one 
reflects  upon  it,  that  men  should  have  main- 
tained so  persistent  a  faith  in  immortality, 
in  the  teeth  of  all  the  appearances  that 
death  ends  all.  After  all  secondary  explana- 
tions of  this  fact  have  been  made,  it  remains 
remarkable  and  becomes  itself  an  assurance 
of  immortality.  Among  all  peoples,  and  in 
all  times,  though  with  very  varying  estimate 
of  its  content,  men  seem  to  have  cherished 
something  of  an  immortal  hope  of  another 
life.  And  we  need  still  to  make  sure  that  we 
are  not  underestimating  the  help  which  faith 
in  immortality  has  to  give,  in  facing  with  cour- 
age and  cheer  the  facts  of  sin  and  suffering. 

And  the  perfect  familiarity  of  the  sugges- 
tion is  not  to  be  allowed  to  hide  from  us  the 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  33 

fact  that  it  is  no  slight  consideration  which 
is  thus  brought  to  view.  If  there  is  another 
life  at  all,  that  simple  fact  greatly  aifects 
our  judgment  of  present  conditions.  The 
present  life  comes  then  to  be  thought  of, 
almost  inevitably,  as  a  period  of  training, 
of  learning  how  to  live;  and  we  do  not  try 
longer  to  estimate  it  as  a  finality.  What 
we  could  not  defend  as  final,  we  can  conceive 
as  not  only  defensible  but  as  having  a  valu- 
able function  to  perform,  as  temporary. 
And  if  that  other  life  may  be  conceived  as 
a  life  of  still  larger  possibilities,  fulfilling  the 
best  potentialities  of  the  present  life,  the 
help  to  be  gained  from  faith  in  immortality 
is  yet  greater. 

Now,  if  one  really  believes  in  a  future 
life  of  still  larger  possibilities,  surely  the 
whole  aspect  of  things  has  changed  for  him. 
Even  in  the  hardest  of  situations,  he  can  still 
say,  ''This  too  shall  pass  away";    and 

Because  the  way  is  short,  I  thank  Thee,  God. 

To  the  common  and  natural  hopes  of  men 
concerning  immortality,  Christ  has  added 
his  own  explicit  assurance  of  the  future 
life  and  of  its  satisfaction  to  us.  It  is  plain 
that   many   of   our    greatest    sorrows    would 


34  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

cease,  if  we  really  believed  in  the  immortal 
hope ;  and  at  least  it  can  certainly  be  said 
that  the  way  to  such  faith  is  not  closed ;  and 
that  we  have  a  right  to  use  this  large  possi- 
bility as  a  part  of  our  answer  to  the  problem 
of  evil. 

4.  There  is  further  help  for  us  from  the 
common  deeper  life  of  men.  For  out  of  it 
have  developed  through  the  centuries  the 
four  common  views  of  suffering,  each  of 
which  has  some  aid  to  give  in  the  solution 
of  the  problem  of  evil.  The  four  views 
have  each  had  many  advocates,  and  all  are 
represented  in  the  Book  of  Job.  These  views 
are :  that  suffering  is  the  punishment  or 
direct  consequence  of  sin ;  that  it  is  present 
in  life  for  the  sake  of  discipline  or  chastening ; 
that  without  it  real  virtue  would  hardly  be 
possible  to  men ;  that  there  is  no  answer 
to  the  problem  of  suffering  but  the  majesty 
of  God.  These  views  make  some  use  of 
considerations  already  employed,  but  are 
suggestive  in  their  interrelations,  and  as  con- 
taining a  kind  of  consensus  of  the  thought  of 
men  on  the  problem  of  suffering.  Concerning 
all  explanations  of  suffering,  it  is  to  be  re- 
membered that  it  is  the  suffering  of  the  right- 
eous for  which  men  chiefly  seek  justification. 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND   SIN  35 

(l)  The  view  that  all  suffering  is  to  be 
considered  as  the  punishment  or  direct  result 
of  sin  is  naturally  one  of  the  first  suggested. 
It  is  the  view  of  Job's  "comforters."  This 
theory  tends  to  solve  the  difficulty  of  the 
suffering  of  the  righteous,  by  denying  that 
there  are  any  righteous  who  could  be  exempt. 
The  marked  incongruities  that  the  theory 
had  to  face  in  the  suffering  of  little  children, 
for  example,  drove  men  logically  to  extend 
the  theory  by  the  hypothesis  of  preceding  ex- 
istences and  of  the  transmigration  of  souls ; 
so  that  suffering  otherwise  unexplained  might 
be  referred  to  sins  in  a  previous  existence. 

With  or  without  this  extension,  the  view 
that  sin  brings  suffering  certainly  has  in 
part  a  solid  basis  in  human  experience.  No 
man  can  deal  honestly  with  himself  and  not 
know  that  much  of  his  suffering  has  come 
through  his  own  sin.  It  was  natural  that 
this  inference  from  self-observation  should 
be  extended  to  others,  and  so  an  attempt  be 
made  to  explain  all  suffering  as  due  to  the 
sin  of  the  sufferer,  thus  relieving  God  of  all 
responsibility.  Now  the  theory  undoubtedly 
does  explain  much  suffering;  but  closer 
and  wider  observation  of  life  made  it  impos- 
sible to   regard   it   as   an   explanation  of  all 


36  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

suffering.  There  was  too  obviously  much 
disproportion  between  sin  and  suffering,  and 
much  suffering  on  the  part  of  the  innocent 
just  because  of  the  closeness  of  their  rela- 
tions to  the  guilty.  And  to  apply  the  theory 
in  judging  others  requires  an  intimacy  of 
knowledge  that  no  outside  observer  can 
have.  We  are  no  doubt  justified  in  believing 
for  all  men  that  much  suffering  does  follow 
directly  on  the  sin  of  the  sufferer;  but  we 
cannot  safely  apply  the  theory  except  to 
ourselves,  and  here  we  do  well  to  apply  it 
searchingly.  One  may  wisely  take  many  of 
his  own  difficulties  as  only  proper  punish- 
ment for  previous  remissness,  and  uncom- 
plainingly and  courageously  face  them. 

(2)  The  view  that  suffering  is  to  be  re- 
garded chiefly  as  discipline,  as  chastening, 
justly  makes  a  wide  appeal.  In  Job  it  is 
the  view  of  Elihu.  It  is  commonly  used  to 
supplement  the  first  view,  to  account  for 
the  suffering  of  those  at  least  comparatively 
righteous.  It,  too,  has  a  sound  basis  in 
experience.  We  have  seen  men  and  women 
strengthen  and  refine  and  grow  under  trial 
and  sorrow.  We  have  seen  suffering  thus 
apparently  do  what  prosperity  had  failed 
to  do.     We  know  in  our  own  cases  that  the 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  37 

presence  of  difficult  circumstances  has  often 
brought  out  of  us  what  easy  times  did  not 
secure.  Men  naturally  extended  this  theory, 
too,  to  try  to  cover  all  the  facts.  All  moral 
and  religious  thinking  has  tended  to  make 
use  of  this  view,  and  has  found  great  help 
in  it. 

And  yet,  taken  alone,  it  is  plainly  not  an 
adequate  explanation  of  the  facts  of  suffer- 
ing. The  distribution  of  suffering,  its  inten- 
sity and  duration  in  many  cases,  the  lack  of 
it  where  it  seems  peculiarly  needed,  and  the 
overplus  where  it  seems  much  less  needed  — 
such  facts  as  these,  so  far  as  man's  insight 
can  go,  indicate  the  limitations  of  the  theory. 

And  the  theory  has  a  further  limitation, 
often  disregarded  by  its  defenders.  After 
all,  suffering  in  itself  is  not  purifying,  is  no 
wonder-worker.  The  result  depends  on  the 
individual's  own  reaction.  As  the  sun  softens 
the  wax  and  hardens  the  clay,  so  suffering 
may  either  soften  or  harden,  sweeten  or 
embitter ;  it  all  depends  on  how  it  is  taken. 
The  theory,  too,  tends  to  ignore  or  implic- 
itly deny  the  helpful  influence  of  joy  as  well 
as  sorrow. 

All  this  does  not  forbid  the  thought  that 
in  God's  intention  suffering  is  often  allowed 


38  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

for  our  discipline.  We  have  already  seen 
that  character  seems  to  require  for  its  de- 
velopment a  large  element  of  struggle;  and 
this  makes  it  certain  that  the  disciplinary 
theory  of  suffering  has  solid  justification. 
But  we  cannot  allow  that  suffering  in  itself 
has  any  magical  power,  or  that  all  suffering 
is  to  be  explained  as  disciplinary.  Even 
when  the  first  and  second  views  are  com- 
bined, much  suffering  seems  still  unaccounted 
for. 

(3)  The  third  view  of  suffering,  that  with- 
out it  virtue  would  hardly  be  possible  to 
men,  is  the  view  suggested  by  the  prelude 
of  Job.  This  view  is  less  immediately  ob- 
vious than  the  two  preceding  views,  but  it 
roots  in  a  genuine  insight  into  what  is  morally 
necessary.  The  question  really  raised  in 
the  prelude  of  Job  is  whether  there  are  any 
truly  unselfish  men  of  character;  whether, 
after  all,  the  seemingly  virtuous  man  is  not 
simply  an  example  of  prudential  selfishness. 
"Doth  Job  serve  God  for  naught.^"  the 
Adversary  sneeringly  asks.  Does  not  the 
seemingly  righteous  and  religious  man  simply 
see  clearly  that  God  has  everything  in  his 
hands,  and  that,  therefore,  if  man  is  to  prosper 
he   must,   in   mere   prudence,   do  what   God 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  39 

requires  ?  If  this  is  not  to  be  the  case, 
this  view  suggests  that  neither  the  certainty 
of  God  nor  the  certainty  of  the  reward  for 
righteousness  must  be  too  plain.  It  must 
be  really  true  that  the  righteous  often  suffer, 
and  suffer  many  times  just  because  of  their 
righteousness.  It  must  often  seem  that  God 
has  forgotten.  Reward  must  not  follow  too 
closely  or  too  inevitably  upon  the  righteous 
act.  The  great  spiritual  facts  and  rewards 
must  be  obscure  enough  to  make  unselfish 
virtue  possible.  One  needs  to  be  able  to 
believe,  for  himself  and  for  others,  that  bare 
prudential  selfishness  is  not  the  final  word. 
Men  need  in  this  sense  the  invisible  God, 
and  a  seeming  unreality  of  the  spiritual 
life.i 

This  is  a  consideration  strongly  urged  by 
Kant,  and  felt  increasingly  since  his  time, 
until  men  have  come  to  feel  that  they  may 
well  thank  God  that  they  live  in  a  world 
in  which  there  is  a  problem  of  evil,  a  world 
in  which  uncalculating,  disinterested  love 
is  possible.  For,  as  I  have  elsewhere  said, 
"the  greatest  evil,  after  all,  would  be  that 
conditions  of  genuine  character  should  fail." 

1  See,  for  further  discussion  of  this  point,  the  author's  Seeming 
Unreality  of  the  Spiritual  Life,  pp.  141-155. 


40  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

Every  such  true  soul  is  a  new  witness  for  the 
reality  of  God  and  the  spiritual  world  — 
"Jehovah's  champion." 

"Reactions,"  eh  ?     Well,  what's  your  formula 

For  one  particular  kind  —  I  won't  insist 

On  proof  of  every  theorem  in  the  list 

But  only  one  —  what  chemicals  combine. 

What  CO2  and  H2SO4, 

To  cause  such  things  as  happened  yesterday, 

To  send  a  very  gallant  gentleman 

Into  antarctic  night,  to  perish  there 

Alone,  not  driven  nor  shamed  nor  cheered  to  die. 

But  fighting,  as  mankind  has  always  fought. 

His  baser  self,  and  conquering,  as  mankind 

Down  the  long  years  has  always  conquered  self  ? 

What  are  your  tests  to  prove  a  man's  a  man  ? 
Which  of  your  compounds  ever  lightly  threw 
Its  life  away,  as  men  have  always  done, 
Spurred  not  by  lust  nor  greed  nor  hope  of  fame 
But  casting  all  aside  on  the  bare  chance 
That  it  might  somehow  serve  the  Greater  Good  ? 

There's  a  reaction  —  what's  its  formula  ? 
Produce  that  in  your  test-tubes  if  you  can ! 

The  significance  of  this  third  view  of  suf- 
fering is  confirmed  by  all  those  considera- 
tions that  arise  from  the  moral  necessity 
of  constant  respect  for  man's  personality  on 
God's  part  as  well  as  on  the  part  of  his  fellow 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  41 

men.  There  must  be  punctilious  regard  by 
God  not  only  for  a  man's  liberty,  but  for 
the  inner  sanctity  of  his  being,  if  he  is  to  be 
brought  to  the  highest  in  character.  Char- 
acter cannot  come  through  coercion  or  dom- 
ination or  even  by  prescription.  There 
must  be  much  that  may  seem  like  forgetful- 
ness  and  neglect  on  God's  part,  if  there  is  to 
be  that  scrupulous  reverence  for  man's  per- 
sonality which  man's  own  true  victory  re- 
quires. For  character  must  be  the  man's 
own  chosen  creative  act ;  and  to  that  end 
the  very  love  of  God  in  its  farsightedness 
does  not  intervene  nor  obtrude.  This  deep- 
going  principle  of  the  necessity  of  constant 
reverence  for  personality  goes  far  to  explain 
many  puzzling  things  in  God's  dealings  with 
men. 

(4)  The  fourth  view  of  suifering  —  that 
there  is  no  answer  to  the  problem  of  suffering 
but  the  majesty  of  God  —  really  falls  back, 
in  large  measure,  on  the  consideration  of 
the  smallness  of  our  view,  already  dealt 
with.  It  is  the  view  of  the  latter  part  of 
Job,  and  it  suggests  not  only  that  the  works 
and  plans  of  God  are  quite  certainly  beyond 
our  power  to  estimate ;  but  also  that  in 
proportion   as   a   man   comes   to  know  God, 


42  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

and  to  get  even  a  poor  appreciation  of  his 
character,  his  majesty,  and  his  infinitude, 
he  will  leave  the  question  readily  in  God's 
hands  unanswered.  He  can  believe  where 
he  cannot  see. 

I  had  heard  of  Thee  by  the  hearing  of  the  ear ; 
But  now  mine  eye  seeth  Thee, 
Wherefore  I  abhor  myself 
And  repent  in  dust  and  ashes. 

Job's  questions  are  not  answered,  but  the 
vision  of  the  majesty  of  God  suffices  to  give 
him  faith  and  patience  in  the  face  of  unan- 
swered questions.  This  view  allies  itself  nat- 
urally with  the  third  view  and  supplements 
it  by  humbling  man  where  the  other  exalts 
him.  We  are  glad  for  all  deeper  insights 
into  truth  granted,  but  at  the  utmost  we 
must  own  our  weakness  and  folly  in  the  face 
of  the  infinite  majesty  of  God. 

All  four  of  the  common  views  of  suffering 
thus  have  elements  of  truth  and  genuine 
help ;  at  some  points  they  strike  deeply 
into  the  heart  of  this  difficult  problem ;  and 
taken  together  they  are  a  worthy  result 
of  the  travail  of  men's  souls  through  the 
centuries  over  this  dark  problem. 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  43 

IV 

The   Christian   Implications  of  Man's 
Nature 

We  have  seen  in  the  previous  sections  that 
there  are  some  important  initial  reasons  for 
faith  in  the  final  solution  of  our  problem, 
and  that  such  a  faith  is  not  precluded  by  the 
fact  of  animal  suffering.  The  inevitable  pre- 
requisites of  a  moral  world,  too,  were  seen 
to  be  such  as  to  require  the  possibility  of  sin 
and  of  suffering  —  a  weighty  and  far-reach- 
ing consideration.  We  should  have  only  a 
play-world  otherwise.  We  might  therefore 
anticipate  exactly  such  difficulties  as  we  do 
find.  The  deeper  common  reactions  of  the 
race  upon  our  problem,  moreover,  were  felt 
to  bring  real  help.  The  necessary  smallness 
of  our  human  view,  the  bearing  of  the  race's 
faith  in  immortality,  the  further  light  from 
the  trend  of  evolution,  and  the  four  common 
views  of  suffering,  all  alike  have  light  to  give. 
Much  suffering  is  indubitably  due  to  the  sin 
of  the  sufferer  himself.  Other  suffering  is 
as  probably  due  to  conditions  required  for 
our  full  discipline  in  living.  Particularly 
is  it  deeply  true,  that  reward  must  not  follow 
too  closely  or  too  surely  upon  the  righteous 


44  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

act  —  that  the  good  must  often  suffer  and 
the  wicked  prosper  —  if  genuinely  unselfish 
character  is  to  be  produced.  We  come  even 
to  be  thankful,  from  this  point  of  view,  that 
we  have  a  problem  of  evil.  And  no  doubt 
ultimately  we  must  fall  back  upon  the  thought 
of  the  majesty  of  God.  Any  adequate  vision 
of  God  makes  us  feel  anew  the  smallness  of 
our  view,  and  the  wisdom  and  necessity, 
after  our  best  attempts  to  understand  God's 
ways,  of  leaving  the  whole  problem  in  his 
hands,  with  faith  in  a  solution  we  cannot  fully 
see.  Now,  has  the  peculiarly  Christian  view 
any  further  answer  to  our  question  ?  Has 
Christ  himself  some  still  larger  help  to  give  ? 
This  is  our  present  inquiry. 

A  series  of  considerations  makes  us  feel 
that  we  have  not  yet  reached  the  heart  of 
the  matter.  For  Christianity  has  made  us 
far  more  sensitive  to  certain  implications  of 
our  natures,  to  which  the  race  as  a  whole, 
to  be  sure,  has  not  been  blind,  but  which 
have  received  an  emphasis  and  setting,  from 
the  Christian  point  of  view,  not  before  pos- 
sible. Christ's  teaching  and  life  and  death 
throw  into  strong  relief  certain  great  trends 
of  our  beings,  and  make  more  possible  a 
positive  attack  upon  our  problem. 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  45 

I.  First  of  all,  we  are  impressed  anew  from 
the  Christian  view-point  that  man  is  really 
made  for  action,  for  heroic  achievement, 
for  service  and  sacrifice  —  so  made  for  all 
this  that  he  cannot  be  satisfied 

With  ghastly  smooth  life,  dead  at  heart, 
Tame  in  earth's  paddock  as  her  prize. 

His  very  sports  show  that  he  joys  in  diffi- 
culties for  their  own  sake.  He  seeks  adven- 
ture and  delights  in  obstacles.  There  is 
something  in  men  far  deeper  than  the  desire 
for  easy-going  pleasure  and  passive  self- 
indulgence.  So  that  a  moral  philosopher 
like  Paulsen  feels  compelled  to  say : 

Who  would  care  to  live  without  opposition  and 
struggle  ?  Would  men  prize  truth  itself  as  they  do,  if 
it  were  attained  without  effort  and  kept  alive  without 
battle  ?  To  battle  and  to  make  sacrifices  for  one's 
chosen  cause  constitutes  a  necessary  element  of  human 
life.  Carlyle  states  this  truth  in  a  beautiful  passage 
in  his  book  on  Heroes  and  Hero-Worship:  "It  is  a 
calumny  to  say  that  men  are  roused  to  heroic  actions  by 
ease,  hope  of  pleasure,  recompense  —  sugar-plums  of 
any  kind  in  this  world  or  the  next.  In  the  meanest 
mortal  there  lies  something  nobler.  The  poor  swearing 
soldier  hired  to  be  shot  has  his  'honor  of  a  soldier,' 
different  from  drill,  regulations,  and  the  shilling  a  day. 
It  is  not  to  taste  sweet  things,  but  to  do  noble  and  true 


46  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

deeds,  and  vindicate  himself  under  God's  heaven  as  a 
God-made  man,  that  the  poorest  son  of  Adam  dimly 
longs.  Show  him  the  way  of  doing  that,  the  dullest  day- 
drudge  kindles  into  a  hero.  They  wrong  man  greatly 
who  say  he  is  to  be  seduced  by  ease.  Difficulty, 
abnegation,  martyrdom,  death,  are  the  allurements 
that  act  on  the  heart  of  man." 

The  difficulties  of  life  therefore  have  their 
own  contribution  to  make  to  life,  just  as 
soon  as  one  looks  at  life  even  approximately 
from  Christ's  view-point.  When  a  man  thus 
positively  faces  life's  ills  he  finds  in  them  an 
opportunity,  which  he  would  not  spare,  for 
a  field  for  training  and  for  conquest,  for  such 
all-round  self-discipline  and  development  of 
will  as  he  knows  he  needs.  He  even  rejoices, 
therefore,  in  many-sided  trials  and  tempta- 
tions, in  order  that  a  patient  steadfastness 
may  "have  its  perfect  work,"  and  that  he 
himself  may  be  called  out  on  every  side,  and 
be  made  "perfect  and  entire,  lacking  in  noth- 
ing." It  is  still  partial  defeat  that  one  should 
be  able  only  to  stand  his  lot,  and  not  also 
to  be  "happy  in  his  lot." 

2.  Nor  are  there  only  this  many-sided 
discipline  of  will  to  be  achieved  and  the  nat- 
ural joy  in  such  achievement.  Life  itself 
and    joy    in    life    both    broaden    and    deepen 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  47 

through  opposition  and  labor  and  misfortune, 
as  Lotze  has  penetratingly  pointed  out : 

By  the  opposition  which  the  natural  course  of  things 
offers  to  a  too  easy  satisfaction  of  natural  impulses ; 
by  the  labor  to  which  man  is  compelled,  and  in  the 
prosecution  of  which  he  acquires  knowledge  of,  and 
power  over,  things  in  the  most  various  relations ; 
finally,  by  misfortune  itself  and  the  manifold  painful 
efforts  which  he  has  to  make  under  the  pressure  of  the 
gradually  multiplying  relations  of  life ;  by  all  this  there 
is  both  opened  before  him  a  wider  horizon  of  varied 
enjoyment,  and  also  there  becomes  clear  to  him  for  the 
first  time  the  inexhaustible  significance  of  moral  ideas 
which  seem  to  receive  an  accession  of  intrinsic  worth 
with  every  new  relation  to  which  their  regulating  and 
organizing  influence  is  extended. 

This  is  only  the  use  of  the  laboratory 
method  in  life  itself.  Nobody  is  going  to 
take  in  the  sweep  of  the  moral  ideas  by  passive 
reception.  He  must  work  them  out  in  the 
laboratory  of  life's  active  experiences.  Man's 
very  being  demands  it.  The  insistence  of 
modern  psychology,  therefore,  that  we  are 
made  for  action,  serves  further  to  accentuate 
considerations  essentially  Christian. 

3.  The  like  facts  that  men  are  made  not 
less  surely  for  personal  relations,  and  that 
the  whole  man  can  come  out  only  in  such 
relations,   have  other  vital  bearings   on  our 


48  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

problem.  The  light  from  Christ's  life  is 
here  unmistakable.  Whatever  the  initial  dif- 
ficulties —  given  a  world  of  sin  and  suffer- 
ing on  the  part  of  others  —  if  one  loves 
others,  he  must  suffer,  and  he  cannot  but 
choose  to  suffer.  Because  we  love,  and  in 
proportion  as  we  love,  we  must  suffer  and 
choose  to  suffer.  Without  some  such  experi- 
ence of  our  own,  indeed,  we  should  be  shut 
out  from  all  the  more  significant  relations 
to  others  who  suffer.  There  could  be  other- 
wise but  a  shallow  understanding  of  them 
or  sympathy  with  them.  If,  then,  in  such 
a  world  one  would  belong  in  the  company 
of  the  highest  in  character,  he  cannot  choose 
but  suffer.  We  are  made  on  so  exalted  a  plan 
that  we  cannot  be  wholly  happy  in  selfish- 
ness. Even  the  most  selfish  wish  at  least 
the  selfless  devotion  of  some  other.  Some 
companionship  in  suffering  then  is  necessary, 
if  we  are  to  be  let  into  the  high  privilege  of 
helping  another  in  his  darkest  hours  —  if 
we  are  not  then  to  be  left  in  the  outer  circle 
of  the  uninitiated.  The  testing  question  of 
life  continues  to  be:  "What,  could  ye  not 
watch  with  me  one  hour  .^" 

4.    And  it  is  only  to  souls  thus  willing  to 
pay  the  price  of  suffering  that  there  can  come, 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  49 

too,  the  joy  of  truly  redeeming  work.  It  is 
part  of  these  very  natures  of  ours,  every- 
where knit  up  with  other  lives,  that  there  is 
no  cheap  way  in  which  this  highest  joy  can 
be  tasted.  Human  love  would  be  less  worthy 
than  it  is,  were  it  not  ready  and  glad  to  pay 
the  price  of  the  suffering  involved  in  winning 
another  to  his  own  highest  good.  For  joy's 
sake,  as  well  as  for  duty's  sake,  the  highest 
in  character  cannot  excuse  themselves  from 
redemptive  suffering. 

5.  Moreover,  it  must  stir  our  thought 
to  see  so  often  that  it  is  not  those  who  have 
suffered  most  who  are  most  unhappy,  or 
most  at  cross-purposes  with  existence,  or 
who  trust  God  the  least.  The  deadly  ennui 
belongs  on  the  whole  not  to  these,  but  to 
the  "favored  sons  of  destiny,"  whose  wants 
seem  all  provided  for  and  who  have  no  struggle 
to  make.  Suffering,  this  would  suggest,  can- 
not quite  be  the  unmitigated  evil  we  are 
tempted  to  regard  it.  One  suspects  there 
must  somehow  be  hidden  in  the  heart  of 
suffering  some  distillate  even  of  joy  —  some 
cure  for  its  own  pain.  This  finds  beautiful 
and  truthful  expression  in  a  passage  in  Eliza- 
beth Hastings'  thoughtful  novel,  An  Experi- 
ment in  Altruism.     To  Janet,  who  has  been 


50  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

inclined  to  quarrel  with  life,  has  come  a 
great  sorrow  in  the  sudden  death  of  her  noble 
lover.  A  friend  goes  to  her  to  speak  what 
comfort  she  can,  but  expecting  to  find  her 
still  more  bitter  than  before. 

"Do  you  know,"  she  said,  "the  sorrow  almost  rests 
me  ?  I  have  had  so  much  of  the  bitter  and  meaningless 
pain.     Perhaps  my  quarrel  with  life  is  over." 

"But  this  is  so  inexplicable,"  I  cried,  taking  the  girl's 
hands  in  mine  and  forgetting  that  I  was  there  to  com- 
fort her. 

"It  doesn't  need  to  be  explained,  because  it  hurts, 
and  the  hurt  is  life,  and  life  is  good.  Oh,  I  tell  you," 
she  added  proudly,  drawing  her  hands  away  and  going 
over  to  seat  herself  by  the  window;  "it  is  only  when 
you  are  standing  outside,  looking  at  life,  talking  about 
it  and  thinking  about  it,  that  you  can  say  it  is  cruel. 
When  you  are  really  living,  the  very  hurt  is  glorious." 

I  sat  and  watched  the  tearless  face.  The  girl  had 
been  carried  beyond  me,  out  into  the  deeps  of  life 
where  my  words  of  help  could  not  reach  her. 

"I  have  always  been  trying  to  reason  out  the  mean- 
ing of  things,"  she  said,  turning  quickly  toward  me, 
"and  nobody  even  told  me  that  it  is  only  what  cannot 
be  said  that  makes  life  worth  while." 

"People  have  tried  to,  Janet,"  I  said  softly,  "but 
that  is  one  of  the  things  that  cannot  be  told." 

"There  isn't  any  kind  of  pain,"  she  said  slowly, 
"that  can  equal  the  joy  of  simple  human  love." 

I  forgot  my  rebellion  of  the  night  before.  I  bowed 
my  head  in  the  presence  of  this  power  for  whose  better 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  51 

apprehending  we  covet  the  very  agony  and  pain  of  life. 
We  follow  swiftly  to  let  even  its  shadow  fall  upon  us,  for 
if  "in  its  face  is  light,  in  its  shadow  there  is  healing  too." 

6.  There  is  still  another  human  experi- 
ence in  these  personal  relations  that  suggests 
that  suffering  Is  no  dumb,  barren,  brute 
fact  without  any  ideal  message.  That  fact 
is  the  repeated  experience  of  the  special 
growth  of  a  true  and  high  love,  through 
fellowship  in  suffering,  in  the  sharing  of 
burdens.  It  is  not  only  that  suffering  seems 
many  times  a  thing  to  rejoice  in,  because  it 
reveals  our  friends  and  God ;  but  that  the 
very  sharing  in  the  common  suffering  pecu- 
liarly draws  souls  together.  Whatever  the 
explanation,  the  fact  remains.  And  the  deep- 
ening love  is  rightly  felt  to  be  more  significant 
than  the  suffering  by  which  it  was  purchased. 
This  fact  is  an  intimation,  once  more,  that 
the  deepest  draughts  of  joy  even  are  not  to 
be  found  in  unmixed  and  easy  pleasure ;  that 
harmony  is  more  than  melody  and  unity 
than  simplicity.  Man's  nature  is  too  broad 
to  make  it  possible  to  satisfy  him  without  an 
admixture  of  self-giving  love,  and  he  glories 
in  the  cost  of  such  love. 

7.  This  holds  not  alone  in  the  realm  of 
personal    love.     It    seems    indeed    to    be    in 


52  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

general  true  that  life's  most  precious  experi- 
ences are  open  to  us  only  through  suffering. 
Here,  again,  whether  we  can  explain  it  or 
not,  a  life  seems  to  us  shallow  into  which 
small  experience  of  suffering  has  come.  We 
cannot,  with  our  eyes  open,  choose  it 
either  for  ourselves  or  for  those  we  love. 
George  Eliot  has  laid  her  finger  on  one  reason 
for  this  common  human  experience,  and  men 
have  turned  often  to  these  words  of  hers 
just  because  they  rang  so  true  : 

We  can  indeed  only  have  the  highest  happiness, 
such  as  goes  with  being  a  great  man,  by  having  wide 
thoughts  and  much  feeling  for  the  rest  of  the  world, 
as  well  as  ourselves ;  and  this  sort  of  happiness  often 
brings  so  much  pain  with  it,  that  we  can  only  tell  it 
from  pain  by  its  being  what  we  should  choose  above 
everything. 

I  always  wish,  myself,  to  couple  with  this 
word  of  George  Eliot's  another  equally  dis- 
cerning but  rarely  quoted  word  of  Lotze's  : 

And  then  there  is  pain,  the  bitterness  of  which  is  only 
intelligible  by  reference  to  the  refined  relations  of  social 
life,  and  to  the  consciousness  of  combined  victory  and 
reconciliation  springing  from  practised  ethical  insight  — 
pain  which  gives  rise  to  innumerable  feelings  not  easily 
expressed,  and  pervading  our  whole  life  like  a  precious 
fragrance  that  we  would  on  no  account  consent  to 
renounce. 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  53 

Here  too  the  joy  is  inextricably  mingled 
with  the  pain.  To  insist  that  one  must 
be  spared  such  pain  as  George  Eliot  and 
Lotze  here  describe  is  to  insist  that  life  should 
be  a  comparatively  barren  and  futile  thing  — 
is  to  insist  that  one  doom  himself  to  an  es- 
sentially narrow  and  shallow  life.  Obviously 
the  indication  here  confirms  our  earlier  reflec- 
tions on  the  prerequisites  of  a  moral  world. 
In  such  a  world  the  bitter  and  the  sweet  go 
back  to  essentially  the  same  sources.  Both 
arise  from  the  fact  and  meaning  of  those  close 
personal  relations  in  which  men  stand.  Even 
when  we  are  most  rebellious  against  the  scheme 
of  things,  nothing  could  persuade  us  to  give 
up  the  personal  relations,  out  of  which  our 
rebellion  springs. 

Still  another  fact  of  our  human  experience 
shows  that  life's  suffering  is  seldom  bare 
pain  and  evil.  Nothing  seems  to  men  more 
sacred  than  certain  kinds  of  suffering,  but  it 
is  always  suffering  in  which  there  is  some  ele- 
ment of  sacrifice.  This  brings  us  directly 
to  seek  the  help  that  may  come  from  Christ's 
own  thought  and  life. 


54  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 


Light  from  Christ 

Christianity  has  done  most  of  all  to  bring 
the  sacredness  and  value  of  sacrificial  suffer- 
ing into  relief.  Paulsen  thus  cannot  be  said 
to  overstate  the  case  when  he  says  : 

The  third  great  truth  which  Christianity  has  im- 
pressed upon  us  is :  The  world  lives  by  the  vicarious 
death  of  the  just  and  innocent.  Whatever  system- 
loving  theology  may  have  made  of  it,  it  remains  the 
profoundest  philosophical-historical  truth.  The  na- 
tions owe  their  existence  to  the  willingness  of  the  best 
and  the  most  unselfish,  the  strongest  and  the  purest,  to 
ofi"er  themselves  for  sacrifice.  Whatever  humanity 
possesses  of  the  highest  good  has  been  achieved  by  such 
men,  and  their  reward  has  been  misunderstanding, 
contempt,  exile,  and  death.  The  history  of  humanity 
is  the  history  of  martyrdom ;  the  text  to  the  sermon 
which  is  called  the  history  of  mankind  is  the  text  to  the 
Good  Friday  sermon  from  the  fifty-third  chapter  of 
the  prophet  Isaiah.^ 

We  need  the  help  of  the  deepest  facts  if 
we  are  to  read  the  riddle  of  the  world's  sin 
and  sorrow,  and  we  are  certainly  close  to 
earth's  deepest  facts  in  the  phenomena  to 
which  Paulsen  here  calls    atention ;    for   this 

^  A  System  of  Ethics,  p.  159. 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  55 

point  of  view,  as  he  clearly  recognizes,  has 
grown  directly  out  of  the  life  and  teaching 
and  death  of  Christ. 

I.  We  have  then  one  more  outstanding 
fact  with  which  we  may  face  the  problem 
of  suffering  and  sin:  '^Christ  also  suffered." 
At  first  sight  the  crucifixion  of  Christ  seems 
only  to  accentuate  and  increase  our  problem ; 
for  it  looks  as  if  God  had  forgotten  Jesus 
too  and  allowed  the  evil  to  triumph  over 
him.  But  the  experience  of  humanity  is 
that,  as  the  years  roll  on,  the  fact  of  Christ's 
suffering  and  death  has  been  the  source  of 
men's  greatest  help,  as  they  themselves  have 
stood  face  to  face  with  suffering  and  sin. 
Already  those  who  were  as  close  to  Jesus' 
time  as  the  New  Testament  writers  disclose 
with  unmistakable  plainness  this  triumphant 
view-point.  They  are  sure  that  Christ's  suf- 
fering greatly  counts,  and  that  it  cannot 
therefore  mean  that  God  forgot  him.  They 
appeal  thus  to  Christ's  suffering  to  strengthen 
their  own  hearts  and  the  hearts  of  their 
brethren  under  a  like  undeserved  suffering. 
The  books  of  Hebrews,  i  Peter,  and  Revela- 
tion all  seek  thus  to  stay  persecuted  and  suf- 
fering souls.  In  essence  their  argument  is 
the  same :    If  Christ  was  allowed  to  suffer 


56  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

and  die  in  rejection  and  apparent  defeat, 
your  suffering  too,  though  it  were  equally 
undeserved,  does  not  mean  that  God  has 
forgotten  you  or  his  kingdom.  In  many 
varied  forms  they  express  it  —  in  literal 
phrase,  in  analogy,  in  vivid  pictorial  presenta- 
tion, like  the  vision  of  the  souls  under  the 
altar,  and  of  the  "Lamb  that  had  been 
slain"  upon  the  throne.  Christ's  suffering, 
therefore,  suggests  to  them  rather  that  their 
suffering,  too,  may  count,  and  that  they  are 
thus  honored  in  sharing  in  the  inmost  work 
of  Christ.  "Beloved,"  runs  a  passage  in 
I  Peter,  "think  it  not  strange  concerning  the 
fiery  trial  which  cometh  upon  you  to  prove 
you,  as  though  a  strange  thing  happened  unto 
you  :  but  inasmuch  as  ye  are  partakers  of 
Christ's  sufferings  rejoice." 

Christ's  life-purpose  and  the  cardinal  prin- 
ciple of  his  teaching  had  been  self-giving 
love.  In  the  terms  of  such  a  love  he  inter- 
preted God  and  life  and  heaven.  His  king- 
dom was  to  come,  not  by  force,  but  by  trust 
in  the  omnipotence  of  such  love.  Were  there 
any  circumstances  too  strong  for  that  ?  Can 
it  stand  the  world  as  it  is  ^  May  we  trust 
God  to  the  bitter  end,  even  to  seeming  defeat 
and    death    with    every    accompaniment    of 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  57 

mental  agony  ?  These  seem  to  be  the  ques- 
tions involved  in  the  crucifixion  of  Christ, 
and  his  disciples  came  to  believe  that  the 
results  of  his  suffering  death  justified,  vindi- 
cated, and  fulfilled  the  faith  shown  in  his 
life  and  teaching;  and  showed  in  turn  to 
men  that  they  might  believe  that  their  suf- 
fering, too,  could  be  made  to  count  for  others. 
In  that  great  consummation  they  would 
have  a  right  greatly  to  rejoice.  Once  more, 
however  we  explain  it,  the  suffering  death  of 
Christ,  conceived  as  the  culmination  of  his 
life,  is  seen  to  have  power  to  stay  the  hearts 
of  men  as  has  no  other  fact. 

The  greatest  gift  the  hero  leaves  his  race 
Is  to  have  been  a  hero. 

"The  prophet,"  wrote  Professor  James  in 
his  chapter  on  the  will,  "has  drunk  more 
deeply  than  anyone  of  the  cup  of  bitterness, 
but  his  countenance  is  so  unshaken  and  he 
speaks  such  mighty  words  of  cheer  that  his 
will  becomes  our  will,  and  our  life  is  kindled 
at  his  own."  In  supreme  degree  this  has 
proved  true  of  Christ.  Mrs.  Stowe  is  thus 
faithful  to  human  nature,  when  she  makes 
Uncle  Tom,  bruised  and  bleeding  for  a  right- 
eous and  kindly  deed,  turn  for  enduring  com- 


58  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

fort  only  to  the  story  of  the  crucifixion.  And 
"The  Sky  Pilot"  can  bring  to  the  rebellious 
sufferer,  to  whom  he  would  minister,  no  deeper 
word  than  one  that  goes  back  again  to  the 
crucified  Christ.  And  as  he  reads  in  Hebrews 
the  passage,  "We  see  Jesus  for  the  suffering 
of  death  crowned  with  glory  and  honor,"  he 
can  only  add:  "You  see,  Gwen,  God  gave 
nothing  but  the  best  —  to  his  own  Son  only 
the  best."  It  must  ever  mean  much  to 
men,  that  something  of  that  best,  it  should 
be  open  to  them,  to  share  with  Christ. 

2.  The  cross  of  Christ  thus  faces  this 
greatest  problem  of  men  —  the  problem  of 
evil  —  with  a  surpassing  fact.  The  cross 
has  mightily,  gloriously  counted,  beyond  all 
doubt,  in  the  actual  history  of  men.  It 
brings  thereby  a  new  note  into  the  whole 
discussion;  for  it  suggests  that  all  suffering 
may  be  made  vicarious  —  may  count  for 
men.  How  great  a  change  this  may  make 
in  our  point  of  view  Professor  James  suggests 
in  his  illustration  in  his  little  book.  Is  Life 
Worth  Living? 

Consider  a  poor  dog  whom  they  are  vivisecting  in  a 
laboratory.  He  lies  strapped  on  a  board  and  shrieking 
at  his  executioners,  and  to  his  own  dark  consciousness 
is  literally  in  a  sort  of  hell.     He  cannot  see  a  single  re- 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  59 

deeming  ray  in  the  whole  business ;  and  yet  all  these 
diabolical-seeming  events  are  usually  controlled  by 
human  intentions  with  which,  if  his  poor  benighted 
mind  could  only  be  made  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  them, 
all  that  is  heroic  in  him  would  religiously  acquiesce. 
Healing  truth,  relief  to  future  sufferings  of  beast  and 
man  are  to  be  bought  by  them.  It  is  genuinely  a 
process  of  redemption.  Lying  on  his  back  on  the  board 
there  he  is  performing  a  function  incalculably  higher 
than  any  prosperous  canine  life  admits  of;  and  yet, 
of  the  whole  performance,  .this  function  is  the  one 
portion  that  must  remain  absolutely  beyond  his  ken. 

Now  turn  from  this  to  the  life  of  man.  In  the  dog's 
life  we  see  the  world  invisible  to  him  because  we  live 
in  both  worlds.  In  human  life,  although  we  only 
see  our  world,  and  his  within  it,  yet  encompassing  both 
these  worlds  a  still  wider  world  may  be  there  as  unseen 
by  us  as  our  world  is  by  him ;  and  to  believe  in  that 
world  may  be  the  most  essential  function  that  our  lives 
in  this  world  have  to  perform. 

3.  In  any  case,  the  fact  that  Christ's 
suffering  death  has  so  counted  for  men  in 
all  the  generations  since  is  a  very  direct  in- 
timation that  all  suffering  may  be  vicarious, 
may  directly  count  for  other  lives.  For  all 
suffering  may  be  turned  into  a  voluntary 
sacrifice,  and  so  be  made  an  offering  to  God 
and  our  fellow-men,  and  thus  have  the  bitter- 
ness of  unmeaning  suffering  taken  out  of 
it.     Matheson  may  thus  well  say:   "If  Thou 


6o  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

art  love,  then  thy  best  gift  must  be  sacrifice ; 
in  that  light  let  me  search  thy  world."  And 
Hinton,  in  his  Mystery  of  Pain,  says  still 
more  directly:  ''All  pains  may  be  summed 
up  in  sacrifice  and  sacrifice  is  the  instru- 
ment of  joy."  "The  happiness  for  which 
we  are  intended  is  one  in  which  pain  is  latent 
—  not  merely  absent,  but  swallowed  up  in 
love  and  turned  to  joy."  Now  that  state- 
ment seems  to  me  to  be  absolutely  true  to 
our  highest  human  experience.  Men  literally 
rejoice  in  sacrifices  made  for  love's  sake. 
They  know  no  truer  joy  than  that  which 
so  comes  to  them.  If,  therefore,  they  can 
reach  a  point  of  view  whence  they  can  feel 
that  all  their  suffering  may  be,  by  the  way 
in  which  they  bear  it,  transmuted  into  volun- 
tary sacrifice,  it  does  thereby  become  an 
"instrument  of  joy."  In  that  case  we  might 
believe  that  no  sacrifice  was  lost.  For  the 
highest  gift  we  can  offer  to  man  or  God  is  a 
self-giving  love.  We  do  not  seek  the  pain 
and  trouble  of  our  friends,  but  we  do  prize, 
nevertheless,  beyond  all  price,  the  love  that 
is  sacrificingly  shown.  And  in  the  full  light 
of  the  cross  of  Christ,  we  can  see  that  we 
are  praying  to  be  delivered  from  the  most 
precious  thing  in  life,  when  we  pray  to  be 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  6i 

delivered  from  the  sacrificial  spirit.  Men 
have  thought  it  a  learned  and  philosophical 
thing  to  say  that  there  was  nothing  that 
men  could  do  for  God.  If  God  be  in  any 
true  sense  a  Father,  this  common  statement 
must  be  fundamentally  false.  And  the  old 
rabbi  was  right  in  his  contention  that  it  was 
given  to  him  to  ''slake  the  thirst  of  God." 

4.  The  cross  of  Christ  has  proved  its 
power  not  less  against  the  other  still  darker 
fact  of  sin,  in  spite  of  all  inadequate  and  even 
sometimes  repulsive  theories  concerning  the 
meaning  of  that  death.  To  help  men  to 
courage  and  faith,  in  the  face  of  suffering, 
is  itself  a  help  against  sin,  a  help  to  character. 
But  the  cross  of  Christ  does  more  than  that. 
It  proves  practically  and  directly  effective, 
in  winning  men  out  of  sin  and  into  a  sharing 
of  Christ's  own  purposes.  It  suggests  inevi- 
tably that  an  unconquerable,  seeking,  self- 
giving  love  is  the  one  great  redemptive  force 
the  world  holds.  It  has  drawn,  and  it  still 
draws,  men  into  a  spirit  like  Christ's  own. 
No  soul  —  father  or  mother,  husband  or 
wife,  brother  or  sister,  or  friend  —  can  truly 
love  a  sinning  man  and  not  suffer  in  his 
sin,  and  carry  its  load.  The  greater  the  love, 
the  deeper   the   suffering.     The   more   stub- 


62  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

bornly  the  sinning  man  holds  on  his  loveless 
course,  the  more  bitter  is  the  suffering  of  the 
one  who  loves  him.  There  is  no  way  by 
which  the  winning  of  such  a  man  back  to 
his  best  self  and  to  his  God  can  be  made 
cheap  and  easy  and  painless.  The  very 
relations  themselves  make  it  impossible.  There 
is  only  one  thing  that  can  win  him,  if  he 
is  to  be  won  at  all  —  the  unconquerable, 
unstinted  love  of  another,  suffering  for  him 
and  with  him.  This  vision  men  have  caught 
in  Christ,  and  it  has  broken  their  hearts, 
humbled  and  subdued  them,  won  their  love 
and  endless  devotion,  and  dedicated  them  to 
a  sharing  in  Christ's  own  redemptive  work. 

Here  too  we  have  direct  help  as  we  face 
the  fact  of  human  sin.  There  is  pointed 
out  to  us  the  one  sovereign  way  in  which  the 
conquest  of  sin  is  to  be  accomplished,  both 
in  ourselves  and  in  others.  And  a  new 
great  motive  is  brought  in,  to  give  us  strength 
to  bear  all  that  suffering  which  is  due  to  the 
sin  of  others.  We  may  so  bear  it,  after  the 
likeness  of  Christ,  as  to  make  it  truly  re- 
demptive; and  may  believe  therefore  that 
Hinton  is  justified  in  saying,  "All  our  pains 
identify  themselves  in  meaning  and  end 
with    the    suffering   of    Christ."     In    a    very 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  63 

real  and  deeply  significant  sense,  thus,  it  is 
given  to  us  to  "know  the  fellowship  of  his 
sufferings";  it  is  given  us  to  share  in,  and 
to  carry  on,  Christ's  own  redemptive  work. 

5.  But  the  suffering  death  of  Christ  has 
a  still  larger  and  deeper  message  for  us. 
Our  highest  conception  of  love,  our  great 
and  increasing  tenderness  to  suffering  itself, 
and  our  courage  and  faith  in  the  face  of  suf- 
fering and  sin,  all  grow  directly  out  of  the 
spirit  and  life  and  death  of  Christ.  Now  the 
best  light  on  the  character  of  God  should 
come  from  the  most  outstanding  and  signifi- 
cant facts  of  the  world.  I  cannot  myself 
doubt  that  the  great  personalities  of  history 
are  such  facts,  and  that  among  these  person- 
alities Christ  is  supreme,  and  therefore  of 
supreme  value  as  indicating  the  kind  of  char- 
acter we  may  expect  to  find  in  God.  As  a 
mere  matter  of  fact,  his  life  has  thus  untold 
significance. 

Moreover,  there  must  be  taken  with  this 
fact  the  further  fact  of  Christ's  own  con- 
sciousness of  mission  from  God — his  sense 
that  the  very  meaning  of  his  life  was  that 
it  revealed  God.  This  ultimately  means 
—  what  has  been  rightly  called  the  great- 
est proposition   of   the   Christian   religion  — 


64  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

that  *'God  is  like  Christ;"  that  we  may 
believe  that  there  is  at  the  heart  of  the  world 
just  such  a  love  as  Christ's,  a  love  that 
suffers  with  men,  unstinted,  endlessly  self- 
giving;  that  this  is  what  is  meant  by  calling 
God  Father.  If  we  can  look  at  Christ  in 
this  way,  as  a  true  manifestation  of  God's 
own  character  and  love,  then  we  can  see  that 
God's  relation  to  us  is  not  an  external  one ; 
that  he  is  no  mere  on-looker;  but  that, 
because  our  Father,  he  suffers  in  our  sin, 
bears  as  a  burden  the  sin  and  suffering  of  us 
all,  and  cannot  be  satisfied  so  long  as  one 
child  of  his  turns  away  in  sorrow  and  sin. 
The  cross  of  Christ  would  then  drop  as  deep 
a  plummet  as  we  can  conceive  into  this 
dark  problem  of  suffering  and  sin.  It  would 
give  us  universally  penetrating  and  enduring 
light.  For  then  indeed  it  would  be  true 
that  "the  agony  of  the  world's  struggle  is 
the  very  life  of  God.  Were  he  mere  spectator, 
perhaps  he  too  would  call  life  cruel.  But 
in  the  unity  of  our  lives  with  him,  our  joy 
is  his  joy;   our  pain  is  his." 

The  life  and  teaching  and  death  of  Christ, 
as  the  great  outstanding  person  of  history, 
and  men's  experience  with  Christ's  life,  may 
fairly  be  said,  thus,  to  confirm  and  to  crown 


THE  QUESTION  OF  SUFFERING  AND  SIN  65 

the  earlier  considerations,  suggesting  faith 
in  a  purpose  of  good  in  the  world.  The  pre- 
requisites of  moral  character  themselves  were 
seen  necessarily  to  involve  the  possibility 
of  suffering  and  sin.  The  common  deeper 
life  of  men  suggested  valuable  uses  of  suffer- 
ing and  further  reasons  for  faith.  And  we 
have  found  man's  own  being  involving  im- 
plications that  could  be  called  prophetic 
of  the  full  Christian  view,  revealed  through 
Christ.  The  larger  light  coming  from  Christ, 
then,  is  harmonious  with  the  deeper  experi- 
ence of  men  elsewhere,  and  puts  solid  ground 
under  our  feet  in  our  search  for  reasons  for 
faith  in  the  goodness  of  God,  in  spite  of  the 
facts  of  sin  and  suffering. 

We  turn  next  to  consider  that  fundamental 
question,  which  deals  with  the  possibility 
of  living  relations  between  God  and  men  — 
the  question  of  prayer,  the  heart  of  religion. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE  QUESTION  OF  PRAYER  — THE  HEART 
OF  RELIGION.  DIFFICULTIES  CON- 
CERNING PRAYER 

I 

Difficulties  Connected  with  a  Supposed 
Scientific  View-point 

I.  In  the  discussion  of  any  spiritual  theme 
in  a  generation  in  which  the  influence  of  natu- 
ral science  has  been  so  momentous  and  so 
dominant  as  in  ours,  it  is  hardly  possible  to 
ignore  the  initial  questions  that  arise  from  the 
scientific  point  of  view.  And  with  reference 
to  prayer,  it  is  well  to  remember,  there  is  no 
reason  why  we  should  not  recognize  the  scien- 
tific principle  of  the  universality  (but  not 
''uniformity")  of  law  —  that  there  is  law  in 
every  sphere  of  life.  There  is  no  doubt  of 
laws  and  of  our  need  of  them,  even  from  the 
religious  point  of  view.  For  it  is  plain  that 
without  a  sphere  of  law  we  could  make  no 
progress  in  knowledge  or  power  or  character ; 

66 


THE  QUESTION  OF   PRAYER  67 

that  the  significance  of  freedom  itself  would 
depend  upon  the  sphere  of  laws  through  which 
that  freedom  could  express  itself;  and  that 
without  some  abiding  laws  in  the  world  we 
could  not  even  maintain  our  faith  in  the  trust- 
worthiness of  God. 

2.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  we  need  to  make 
it  clear  to  ourselves  that  there  is  no  sphere 
of  eternally  self-existing  laws,  or  laws  preced- 
ing all  reality.  Such  a  conception,  it  should 
be  plain,  is  really  unthinkable.  We  need 
clearly  to  see  that  law  can  "exist"  only  in 
one  of  two  ways  :  either  as  the  mode  of  activ- 
ity of  some  existing  reality  or  as  a  formulation 
made  in  the  mind  of  some  observer  of  the  way 
in  which  this  reality  acts.  It  is  therefore  im- 
possible to  speak  of  laws  as  preceding  all  exist- 
ence, or  as  having  any  existence  of  their  own 
apart  from  all  really  existent  beings.  It  fol- 
lows also  that  laws,  as  such,  can  do  nothing. 
They  cause  nothing,  they  finally  explain 
nothing.  They  are  only  our  formulation  of 
the  way  in  which  things  act,  or,  in  any  final 
statement,  of  the  modes  of  God's  activity. 

3 .  But,  as  surely  as  there  is  no  doubt  of  laws, 
and  of  our  need  of  them,  so  surely  is  there  no 
doubt  either  of  our  need  of  God  and  the  sense 
of  his  presence  and  power  and  love  back  of 


68  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

all  the  world.  If  religion  is  to  exist  at  all, 
men  need  to  be  able  to  believe  in  a  living  God 
who  can  come  into  real  and  effective  relations 
with  his  children,  who  is  able  to  manifest 
himself  to  them,  and  able  to  adapt  himself  in 
love  to  their  changing  needs.  And  there  can 
be  no  possible  defense  of  the  real  rationality 
of  the  world  if  the  moral  and  spiritual  inter- 
ests are  not  supreme.  Here  religion  is  at  one 
with  every  ideal  interest.  For  all  ideal  in- 
terests must  insist  that  the  world  cannot  be 
a  mere  machine,  but  must  have  meaning  and 
worth.  Its  mechanism  must  be  subordinated 
to  great  rational  ends.  Eucken  speaks  the 
inevitable  conviction  of  the  religious  man 
when  he  says  : 

When,  however,  we  put  the  question  universally, 
showing  at  the  same  time  that  in  ceasing  to  give  life  a 
spiritual  basis  we  allow  the  purely  humanistic  culture 
an  undisputed  right  over  the  whole  field,  and  that  this 
culture  has  no  effective  way  of  dealing  with  the  hollow- 
ness  and  illusions  of  existence,  then  to  every  thinking 
man  the  great  alternative  presents  itself,  the  Either-Or. 
Either  there  is  something  other  and  higher  than  this 
purely  humanistic  culture  or  life  ceases  to  have  any 
meaning  or  value. 

4.  It  may  well  be  urged,  too,  that  there  is 
absolutely  no  compelling  reason,  philosophic 


THE  QUESTION  OF  PRAYER  69 

or  scientific,  to  deny  the  direct  access  of  God 
to  human  minds.  Men  can  hardly  help  rea- 
soning :  We  have  such  access  to  each  other's 
minds,  can  it  be  that  He,  who  made  these 
minds  and  knows  every  avenue  of  approach  to 
them,  has  not  such  access  ?  We  can  change 
the  course  of  life  of  our  fellow-creatures ;  can 
it  be  that  God  is  powerless  at  this  point  ?  In 
one  of  his  earlier  works  Pfleiderer  naturally 
reasons  to  the  same  import : 

And  why  should  it  be  less  possible  for  God  to  enter 
into  a  loving  fellowship  with  us  than  for  men  to  do  so 
with  each  other  ?  I  should  be  indined  to  think  that 
He  is  even  more  capable  of  doing  so.  For  as  no  man 
can  altogether  read  the  soul  of  another,  so  no  man  can 
altogether  live  in  the  soul  of  another;  hence  all  our 
human  love  is  and  remains  imperfect.  But  if  we  are 
shut  off  from  one  another  by  the  limits  of  individuality, 
in  relation  to  God  it  is  not  so ;  to  Him  our  hearts  are 
as  open  as  each  man's  own  heart  is  to  himself;  He  sees 
through  and  through  them,  and  He  desires  to  live  in 
them,  and  to  fill  them  with  His  own  sacred  energy  and 
blessedness. 

To  deny  such  access  of  God  to  the  human 
mind  is  to  deny  the  possibility  of  revelation, 
to  deny  prayer,  to  deny  any  living  contact 
with  God ;  practically  to  deny  that  there  is 
any  really  living  concrete  God  at  all.  It  is  to 
go  back  to  something  very  like  the  castoff 


70  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

deism  of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  is  hardly- 
possible  that  religion  should  be  able  to  main- 
tain such  a  view  of  things.  As  Orr  says  : 
"The  kind  of  theism  that  remains  after  the 
Christian  element  has  been  removed  out  of 
it  is  not  one  fitted  to  satisfy  either  the  reason 
or  the  heart." 

5.  Evolution  itself,  too,  seems  to  point  to 
revelation  and  prayer  —  to  a  living  associa- 
tion with  God,  in  that  its  goal,  so  far  as  we 
can  see,  is  man.  And  in  man  evolution  has 
reached  a  creature  in  whom  a  new  spiritual 
evolution  begins,  whose  life  is  primarily  in 
personal  relations ;  that  is,  in  relations  of 
self-revelation  and  faith.  Man  is  made,  thus, 
one  may  well  feel,  for  revelation,  for  prayer. 
And  it  would  seem  a  very  helpless  God  in- 
deed who  was  unable  to  come  into  these  rela- 
tions of  self-revelation  and  faith  and  so  to 
meet  our  deepest  needs. 

6.  Moreover,  it  is  sometimes  urged  that 
prayer  cannot  be  harmonized  with  the  course 
of  nature.  But  the  objector  needs  to  be  re- 
minded that  no  small  part,  and  not  the  least 
important  part,  of  nature  is  human  nature, 
and  that  prayer  most  certainly  does  fit  human 
nature.  As  Professor  James  said  long  ago, 
in  his  Psychology : 


THE  QUESTION   OF  PRAYER  71 

We  hear,  In  these  days  of  scientific  enlightenment,  a 
great  deal  of  discussion  about  the  efficacy  of  prayer; 
and  many  reasons  are  given  us  why  we  should  not  pray, 
whilst  others  are  given  us  why  we  should.  But  in  all 
this  very  little  is  said  of  the  reason  why  we  do  pray, 
which  is  simply  that  we  cannot  help  praying.  It  seems 
probable  that,  in  spite  of  all  that  "science"  may  do  to 
the  contrary,  men  will  continue  to  pray  to  the  end  of 
time,  unless  their  mental  nature  changes  in  a  manner 
which  nothing  we  know  should  lead  us  to  expect. 

What  so  fits  human  nature,  what  is  practi- 
cally inevitable  to  it,  is  intrinsically  probable. 
On  the  other  hand,  any  mere  machine  pro- 
vision, in  which  answers  to  prayer  are  wrought 
into  the  machine,  utterly  fails  to  meet  the 
moral  and  spiritual  needs  of  men.  Our  high- 
est need,  after  all  —  the  chief  source  of  both 
character  and  happiness  —  Is  personal  associa- 
tion. Are  the  divine  association  and  response 
denied  us  ?  If  they  are,  then  It  is  the  simple 
truth  to  say,  as  Browning  frequently  insists, 
that  men  can  be  more  to  us  than  God.  That 
will  be  regarded  as  an  impossible  conclusion. 

Now  if  these  larger  considerations  are  to  be 
given  any  weight  at  all,  it  is  plain  that  we  can- 
not admit  that  the  scientific  view-point  com- 
pels us  to  turn  prayer  into  what  is  simply  a 
kind  of  spiritual  gymnastics.  If  religion  is 
to  be  possible  at  all,  the  reality  of  effective 


72  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

relations  between  God  and  men  cannot  be 
denied  —  relations  that  involve  actual  re- 
sponse on  God's  part. 

7.  Nor,  if  such  effective  relations  are  to  be 
supposed,  can  we  narrowly  fix  the  scope  of 
prayer.  Doubtless  in  the  Christian  view  of 
prayer  spiritual  interests  are  always  put  above 
temporal  interests.  The  very  proportion  of 
the  petitions  in  the  Lord's  Prayer  makes  this 
emphatic.  Doubtless,  too,  it  will  be  increas- 
ingly true  as  a  man  goes  on  developing  in  the 
spiritual  life  and  grows  in  prayer  that  the 
spiritual  interests  will  more  and  more  take  the 
lead  and  occupy  the  main  place  in  his  commu- 
nion with  God.  But  the  relation  with  God 
can  hardly  be  the  real  and  adequate  and  vital 
thing  it  ought  to  be,  if  it  is  on  any  ground  to 
be  assumed  that  one  may  not  bring  all 
things  to  God.  I  cannot  doubt,  here,  that 
a  rather  mechanical  conception  of  the  world 
which  has  naturally  come  into  the  foreground 
of  this  scientific  generation,  has  produced  for 
many  minds  what  is,  after  all,  a  bugbear  of 
the  religious  life.  The  universe  is  not  a 
machine  with  which  nothing  can  be  done. 
Even  if  we  were  assuming  the  same  kind  of 
finite  and  partial  relation  to  the  world  on  God's 
part  that  holds  of  men,  we  should  hardly  be 


THE  QUESTION  OF   PRAYER  73 

able  to  infer  that  God's  relation  must  leave 
him  less  able  to  accomplish  results  than  we 
ourselves.  Let  us  be  sure  that  if  religion  has 
any  rational  basis  at  all,  God  is  not  dead  or 
powerless. 

Nor  is  it  well  for  us  to  adopt  some  a  priori 
theory  of  prayer,  on  supposed  scientific 
grounds,  that  would  rigidly  exclude  all  tem- 
poral requests.  However  sure  we  are  that 
the  spiritual  interest  must  be  the  dominant 
interest  in  prayer,  and  however  clear  it  is  to 
us  that  in  prayer  we  are  to  seek  God  and  not 
things,  we  simply  must  pray  concerning  that 
which  disturbs  our  peace ;  else,  as  Herrmann 
has  suggested,  our  prayer  is  not  a  really  hon- 
est prayer;  it  does  not  truly  represent  us. 
As  he  says : 

Whatever  really  so  burdens  the  soul  as  to  threaten  its 
peace  is  to  be  brought  before  God  in  prayer,  with  the 
confidence  that  the  Father's  love  understands  even  our 
anxious  clinging  to  earthly  things.  ...  If  we  try  of 
ourselves  to  get  free  from  these,  and  so  far  do  not  pray 
about  them,  we  do  ourselves  a  twofold  injury.  In  the 
first  place,  we  make  our  prayer  dead  and  insincere; 
it  is  in  truth  not  our  own  prayer  at  all,  but  might  be 
the  prayer  of  a  man  placed  in  utterly  diflterent  condi- 
tions ;  and  secondly,  we  do  not  really  lay  ourselves 
before  the  God  who  would  be  sought  of  us  as  our 
Helper  and  Saviour ;  we  rather  Imagine  a  God  who  has 


74  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

a  kind  of  love  for  the  human  ideal,  but  has  no  sympathy 
for  our  needs. ^ 

Obviously,  if  our  religion  is  to  be  contermi- 
nous with  our  life  and  permeate  the  whole  of 
it,  we  simply  cannot  put  all  our  common  life 
out  of  touch  with  God.  We  are  not,  there- 
fore, to  limit  prayer  to  what  we  ourselves 
see  that  it  is  possible  for  God  to  do.  Even  in 
our  human  relations  it  would  be  a  foolish 
child  that  would  so  limit  his  requests  of  his 
father.  We  are  not  very  wise  at  best  as  to 
the  possibilities  in  this  universe  of  ours,  and 
we  need  not  be  afraid  of  embarrassing  God. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  obviously  a 
great  possible  abuse  of  prayer  in  pressing 
purely  temporal  requests  with  God.  No 
personal  relation  can  bear  a  dominant  selfish 
interest  in  the  things  which  the  friendship 
may  bring.  It  will  surely  not  be  less  true 
in  our  relation  to  God  that  we  shall  utterly 
spoil  the  relation  if  we  think  of  it  as  primarily 
a  means  to  temporal  results.  God  is  no  mere 
reservoir  of  good  things,  nor  is  prayer  an  in- 
fallible way  of  obtaining  them.  As  Trum- 
bull long  ago  insisted,  what  men  need  is  faith 
in  God  rather  than  "faith  in  prayer." 

1  The  Communion  of  the  Christian  with  Cody  Second  English  Edi- 
tion, p,  338. 


THE  QUESTION  OF  PRAYER     75 

II 

Difficulties  from  a  False  Conception  of 
Prayer 

Besides  the  difficulties  which  arise  in  part 
from  certain  unwarranted  prepossessions  due 
to  a  mechanistic  view  of  the  world,  there  are 
difficulties  which  arise  from  a  false  conception 
of  prayer  itself. 

I.  It  is  here,  It  seems  to  me,  that  the 
famous  proposal  of  a  prayer-gauge  (commonly 
associated  with  the  name  of  Mr.  Tyndall) 
lies,  rather  than  in  the  field  of  scientific  diffi- 
culties. As  a  matter  of  fact,  neither  the  idea 
nor  the  term  came  originally  from  Tyndall, 
though  It  was  through  him  that  the  notion  be- 
came current.  The  idea  amounted  to  attempt- 
ing to  apply  a  gauge  to  prayer,  in  the  same 
sense  in  which  one  might  apply  a  gauge  to 
steam.  It  ought  hardly  to  be  necessary  to 
say  at  all  that  such  a  conception  is  utterly  be- 
side the  mark  from  the  Christian  point  of  view. 
Prayer,  for  Christ,  is  no  force  put  simply  in 
man's  hands  to  be  measured  by  the  number 
of  prayers  or  the  number  of  persons  or  the 
length  of  time  in  prayer.  There  are  no  units 
of  compulsive  force  on  God  to  be  so  gauged. 
Prayer  is  no  compulsion  or  command  on  God. 


76  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

God  does  not  abdicate  his  throne  and  simply 
allow  the  human  will  to  determine  results. 
Else  we  should  not  dare  to  pray.  We  are 
many  times  clearly  aware,  even  in  the  case  of 
interests  that  seem  very  precious  to  us,  that 
we  simply  do  not  know  what  results  are  really 
best.  We  dare  to  pray  because  we  come  to 
one  who  loves  us,  and  has  the  infinite  wis- 
dom to  express  that  love  as  it  may  best  be 
expressed.  If  there  is  prayer  at  all  in  the 
Christian  sense,  therefore,  it  is  prayer  offered 
always  in  glad  and  necessary  submission  to 
the  wisdom  and  love  of  God.  So  that  from 
the  Christian  point  of  view  a  prayer  even  for 
direct  results  may  be  "answered"  just  as 
truly  in  the  refusal  as  in  the  granting  of  the 
specific  request.  And  to  gauge  prayer  in 
this  larger  sense  would  require  nothing  less 
than  infinite  wisdom. 

There  is  besides,  of  course,  the  practical 
impossibility  of  any  such  test  as  that  pro- 
posed, since  prayer  as  a  spiritual  force,  as  has 
been  suggested,  cannot  be  measured  by  the 
number  of  prayers  or  the  number  of  persons 
or  length  of  time  in  prayer.  No  measurable 
test  is  possible.  Spiritually  valued,  the 
prayer  of  one  might  outweigh  the  prayer  of 
many.     And   whatever   previous    agreements 


THE  QUESTION  OF  PRAYER  ^-j 

were  made  concerning  the  patients  in  a  hos- 
pital that  were  to  be  prayed  for  and  those 
that  were  not,  the  dumb  desire  of  the  patient 
himself  or  of  his  friends  might  well  be,  in  the 
thought  of  God,  as  eloquent  praying  as  the 
most  elaborately  voiced  petitions.  If  there 
be  a  God  at  all  he  can  be  no  mere  passive 
mass,  subject  to  the  pressure  of  human  deter- 
mination. He  has,  himself,  infinite  purposes 
of  love  and  wisdom  to  work  out  in  the  world 
and  in  relation  to  men  quite  beyond  our 
gauging  in  any  possible  mechanical  fashion. 

2.  A  second  difficulty,  arising  from  a  false 
conception  of  prayer,  is  sometimes  expressed 
in  the  form :  God  knows  what  I  need,  why, 
therefore,  should  I  pray  t 

It  is  interesting  to  see  that  Christ  himself, 
in  his  own  teaching,  seems  to  argue  in  exactly 
the  other  way :  "Your  Father  knoweth  what 
things  ye  have  need  of,  before  ye  ask  him. 
After  this  manner  therefore  pray."  Let  one 
see  the  real  implication  of  the  objection 
here  urged  against  prayer.  God  must  either 
know  or  not  know  what  we  need.  Would  it 
be  a  better  reason  for  prayer  to  reverse  the 
statement  of  the  objector  and  say :  God  does 
not  know  what  I  need,  therefore  I  will  pray  ? 
Certainly  we    are    not    likely   to   seek    help 


78  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

from  a  God   who   does   not   know  what  our 
needs  are. 

Christ  seems  to  be  really  arguing,  in  his 
teaching  concerning  prayer,  in  Matthew, 
somewhat  in  this  fashion  :  We  are  to  pray, 
not  because  God  is  reluctant  and  because  his 
will  must  be  battered  down  by  incessant 
repetition  —  "Use  not  vain  repetitions,  as  the 
Gentiles  do."  Nor  are  we  to  pray  as  a  short 
cut  to  things,  making  prayer  largely  selfish 
and  material.  Our  great  need  in  every  per- 
sonal relation  is  the  need  of  the  person  himself, 
not  primarily  of  the  things  that  the  relation 
may  carry  with  it.  We  need  God  and  com- 
munion with  God.  If  prayer  is  to  have  any 
reality  worth  talking  about,  it  must  be  the 
reality  of  a  divine  association,  involving  contin- 
uous mutual  self-revelation  and  answering 
faith.  When  prayer  is  so  personally  conceived, 
it  is  seen  to  be  the  achievement  and  gift  of  a 
lifetime,  though  the  simplest  of  things.  But 
we  obviously  cannot  drift  into  it.  Here,  too, 
the  best  is  a  growth  —  the  growing  expres- 
sion of  a  deep  inner  life,  where  the  conditions 
of  a  satisfying  personal  relation  are  ful- 
filled. Christ  seems  therefore  to  be  urging 
with  men  positively  that  it  is  because  God 
knows  and  loves  and  cares,  that  we  dare  to 


THE  QUESTION  OF   PRAYER  79 

pray  and  may  pray.  If  he  did  not  know, 
there  would  be  no  use  in  praying ;  and  if  he 
did  not  love  and  care,  we  should  not  dare  to 
pray.  In  all  this,  Christ  is  answering  that 
inherent  and  inevitable  need  of  prayer  to 
which  Professor  James  referred.  Whatever 
our  theories  about  prayer,  we  must  pray. 
We  cannot  help  the  instinctive  cry  to  the  uni- 
verse, to  any  God  in  whom  we  blindly  believe, 
when  we  are  thinking  of  the  things  that  deeply 
concern  us.  Where  work  to  which  we  have 
given  our  life,  where  our  intrinsic  honor,  where 
the  friends  whom  most  we  love,  are  concerned, 
there  we  must  pray.  And  to  this  need  Christ 
responds.  You  may  pray. 

One  who  rightly  conceives  the  personal  re- 
lation involved  in  prayer  can  hardly  fail  to 
realize,  too,  that  the  objection  we  are  con- 
sidering stops  in  a  very  shallow  conception 
of  prayer.  As  in  any  personal  relation,  God 
cannot  give  himself  and  his  best  blessings  ex- 
cept to  responsive  hearts.  The  deepest  self- 
revelation  can  be  made  only  to  the  reverent, 
and  prayer  is  this  response  to  God,  this 
opening  of  ourselves  to  him.  As  surely  as  the 
best  gifts  of  friendship  cannot  be  made  avail- 
able to  the  purely  selfish  person,  so  surely 
must  there  be  some  active  response  in  our 


8o  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

human  hearts  to  God's  own  self-revelation, 
if  he  is  to  bestow  all  that  he  would  upon  us. 

Moreover,  because  respect  for  the  person- 
ality of  another  is  the  deepest  condition  of 
right  personal  relations,  we  may  be  certain 
that  God's  attitude  is  always  that  of  reverence 
for  the  human  personality.  He  does  not 
thrust  himself  upon  us ;  he  does  not  force  his 
way  into  our  lives.  He  stands  at  the  door  of 
the  human  heart  to  knock ;  it  is  for  us  to  open 
the  door.  The  effective  relation  between  God 
and  men  must  always  be  a  work  of  coopera- 
tion.    And  prayer  is  this  opening  of  the  door. 

It  must  also  be  added,  of  course,  that  the 
objection  we  are  now  considering  seems  to 
think  of  prayer  as  purely  of  the  nature  of  re- 
quest, and  quite  ignores  the  whole  great  range 
of  personal  relations  in  the  communion  of 
spirit  with  spirit,  quite  independent  of  things 
asked  for.  Doubtless  the  thought  that  God 
knows  my  need  and  has  me  in  his  loving  care, 
will  keep  me  from  urging  with  importunate 
anxiety  requests  for  things  concerning  whose 
good  I  cannot  be  sure,  and  therefore  may  well 
affect  the  proportion  of  prayer  to  be  given  to 
doubtful  requests.  But  it  ought  not  to  deter- 
mine the  entire  question  of  what  prayer  is  to 
be  to  me. 


THE  QUESTION  OF  PRAYER 


III 


Difficulties  from  the  Supposed  Improb- 
ability OF  Prayer 

But  though  certain  initial  difficulties  con- 
cerning prayer  may  be  thus  set  aside,  the  hu- 
man heart  is  concerned  with  the  main  ques- 
tion :  What,  after  all,  is  the  probability  of 
effective  relations  between  God  and  men  ? 
Are  we  just  deceiving  ourselves  here  ?  Is 
prayer  a  fond  delusion  ?  Are  there  any  spirit- 
ual forces,  any  relations  of  appeal  and  re- 
sponse, between  God  and  man  ?  Ultimately 
we  must  be  willing  fully  to  face  the  facts,  for  it 
is  no  gain  for  any  of  us  that  we  should  be  finally 
deceived.  Is  it  easier,  then,  to  deny  the  real- 
ity of  prayer  ?  We  live  in  an  age  with  a  "stu- 
pendous reliance  on  machinery,"  in  an  age  of 
enormous  material  conquest,  in  an  age  in 
which  knowledge  of  the  material  world  is 
greatly  extended,  in  a  business,  commercial, 
and  organizing  age.  And  it  is  peculiarly  easy 
in  such  an  age  that  the  spiritual  factors  in 
life  should  be  somewhat  hidden.  Let  us  ask 
ourselves,  therefore,  what  the  probability 
concerning  prayer  is.  The  probabilities  of 
the  case  can  perhaps  be  briefly  summarized. 


82  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

1 .  In  the  first  place,  and  for  myself,  I  cannot 
doubt  that  we  must  affirm  the  inherent  prob- 
ability of  prayer.  God  is  ;  we  are.  The  in- 
terrelation of  God  and  the  human  soul  is  to  be 
expected.  The  reasons  would  need  to  be  very 
strong  that  would  set  aside  such  inherent  prob- 
ability. 

2.  Moreover,  we  need  God.  All  the  deeper 
knowledge  of  human  nature  makes  us  feel  that 
man  cannot  be  satisfied  simply  with  the  finite. 
And  Augustine's  great  word  has  been  so  fre- 
quently quoted  just  because  it  answers  so 
completely  to  the  instinctive  judgment  of 
men  :  "Thou  hast  made  us  for  Thyself,  and 
the  heart  of  man  is  restless  until  it  finds  its  rest 
in  Thee."  If  we  are  to  recognize  the  exist- 
ence of  God  at  all,  we  must  believe  that  he 
seeks  our  best  good,  and  that  what,  therefore, 
is  necessary  to  our  highest  development  will 
not  be  denied  us. 

3.  Nor  can  we  leave  out  of  account  the  fur- 
ther fact  that  all  men  are  impelled  to  pray. 
The  practically  universal  fact  of  religion  has 
everywhere  meant  prayer.  Has  this  instinct 
no  response  ?  John  Fiske  carries  one's  con- 
viction when  he  says  : 

If  the  relation  thus  established  In  the  morning  twi- 
light of  Man's  existence  between  the  Human  Soul  and  a 


THE  QUESTION  OF   PRAYER  83 

world  invisible  and  immaterial  is  a  relation  of  which  only 
the  subjective  term  is  real  and  the  objective  term  is 
nonexistent,  then,  I  say,  it  is  something  utterly  without 
precedent  in  the  whole  history  of  creation.  All  the 
analogies  of  Evolution,  so  far  as  we  have  yet  been  able 
to  decipher  it,  are  overwhelmingly  against  any  such 
supposition. 

******* 

The  lesson  of  evolution  is  that  through  all  these 
weary  ages  the  Human  Soul  has  not  been  cherishing  in 
Religion  a  delusive  phantom,  but  in  spite  of  seemingly 
endless  groping  and  stumbling  it  has  been  rising  to  the 
recognition  of  its  essential  kinship  with  the  ever-living 
God.  Of  all  the  implications  of  the  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion with  regard  to  Man,  I  believe  the  very  deepest  and 
strongest  to  be  that  which  asserts  the  Everlasting 
Reality  of  Religion.^ 

4.  It  is  probably  not  too  much  to  say, 
either,  that  the  best  in  the  race  have  tended  to 
make  the  most  of  prayer.  Certainly  the  great 
moral  and  spiritual  seers  and  leaders  of  the 
race  have  given,  on  the  whole,  emphatic  testi- 
mony at  this  point. 

5.  Christ's  own  practice  and  example  here 
are  still  more  convincing  to  the  Christian. 
The  Christian  man  feels  that  one  might  well 
rest  the  entire  argument  for  prayer  upon  this 
great  single  fact.  For  if  we  are  to  regard 
Christ  simply  as  the  supreme  character  of  the 

^  Fiske,  Through  Nature  to  God,  pp.  189,  191. 


84  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

race,  the  man  of  clearest  moral  and  spiritual 
discernment,  we  cannot  overlook  the  fact 
that  he  was  preeminently  a  man  of  prayer. 
Prayer  evidently  was  his  one  great  source 
of  strength,  of  solace,  and  of  courage.  He 
flees  to  God.  It  may  well  be  doubted  whether 
any  of  his  disciples  have  given  sufficient 
weight  to  this  example  of  Christ  himself.  If 
he  needed  such  recourse  to  prayer,  and  found 
such  life  in  it,  we  may  be  very  sure  that  we 
need  it  still  more.  We  are  not  likely  to  make 
any  mistake  in  following  Christ's  example. 

It  is  perfectly  plain,  moreover,  that  Christ 
does  not  regard  this  communion  with  the  Fa- 
ther as  something  in  which  he  has  a  part  where 
men  have  none ;  for  he  encourages  and  urges 
and  commands  prayer  on  the  part  of  his  disci- 
ples. Christ's  unmistakable  example  and 
teaching  suggest  much  more  than  the  mere 
probability  of  the  reality  of  prayer.  Whether 
the  matter  of  prayer  is  entirely  clear  to  us  or 
not,  it  evidently  was  an  unquestioned  fact  for 
him.  He  knew.  He  felt  that  he  could  bear 
testimony  out  of  his  own  experience,  and  the 
testimony  is  the  expert  testimony  of  a  master 
in  the  realm  of  the  moral  and  spiritual.  If  the 
revelation  of  God  in  Christ  means  anything,  it 
surely  means  the  reality  of  prayer. 


THE  QUESTION  OF  PRAYER  85 

IV 

Difficulty   from   the   Lack   of   a   Felt 
Presence  and  Response  in  Prayer 

Perhaps  the  difficulty  that  is  most  felt  by 
those  trying  to  find  their  way  into  the  reli- 
gious life  is  what  they  take  to  be  the  lack  of 
a  felt  presence  and  a  definite  response  from 
God  in  prayer,  such  as  they  feel  that  they  ob- 
tain in  relation  to  the  outer  world  or  to 
another  person  in  the  body.  The  complaint 
is  of  a  sense  of  seeming  unreality,  that  seems 
to  them  quite  different  from  what  they  ex- 
perience in  these  other  relations. 

Concerning  this  really  comprehensive  diffi- 
culty, it  is  to  be  said,  first  of  all,  that  there  is 
no  doubt  that  God's  relation  to  us  is  not  in- 
tended to  be  an  obtrusive  relation  —  a  rela- 
tion that  forces  itself  upon  us  and  from  the 
sense  of  which  we  are  unable  to  escape.  As  I 
have  elsewhere  argued,  the  very  possibility 
of  moral  choice  on  our  part,  and  of  a  normal 
development  in  the  moral  and  religious  life, 
seems  to  require  that  God  should  sacredly 
respect  our  freedom  and  not  make  his  rela- 
tion to  us  an  obtrusive  or  dominating  or  ines- 
capable one.  We  need  here  imperatively 
the   invisible   God.     And    this    consideration 


86  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

deeply  aifects  the  whole  problem.  We  shall 
return  to  it  a  little  later. 

I.  Moreover,  it  is  to  be  said  that  God  must 
be  known  like  any  other  personality,  through 
his  self-manifestations.  If  we  are  right  in 
thinking  at  all  of  a  God  immanent  in  the  whole 
universe,  these  self-manifestations  must  be 
manifold  :  in  the  constitution  of  nature,  in 
our  own  natures  and  experience,  in  human 
history,  in  the  touch  of  other  lives,  and  par- 
ticularly in  the  great  personalities  who  have 
seen  and  lived  most  truly. 

The  religious  man  may  well  remind  himself 
that  he  cannot  wholly  mistake  the  working 
of  God  in  his  historical  leading  of  the  race, 
for  example,  and  especially  as  traced  in  the 
Old  and  New  Testaments.  If  we  see  reason 
to  believe  that  God  was  here  in  real  relation  to 
men,  we  ought  not  to  find  it  impossible  to  be- 
lieve in  his  continued  on-working  through  the 
generations. 

The  Christian  man,  too,  has  reason  to  be- 
lieve not  only  that  God  has  in  general  ex- 
pressed himself  in  the  world  as  a  whole,  but 
that  men  have  had  the  need  of  concrete,  defi- 
nite, human,  unmistakable  manifestation 
already  peculiarly  and  supremely  met  in  the 
historical  life  of  Jesus.     As  he  puts  himself  in 


THE  QUESTION  OF   PRAYER  87 

the  presence  of  this  historical  life  of  Christ, 
he  is  likely  to  discover  that  God  is  able  to 
find  him  in  and  through  Christ  as  nowhere 
else.  God  knew  our  need  of  such  a  definite 
and  concrete  manifestation  and  met  that 
need.  With  that  need  supremely  met,  the 
problem  becomes  one  of  a  life  of  faith ;  but  a 
life  of  faith  based  on  evidence,  not  without 
evidence. 

It  is  to  be  remembered  also  that  it  is  hard  to 
appreciate  any  great  character  and  his  work 
when  one  stands  close  to  it.  It  is  particularly 
true  that  it  was  impossible  for  men  to  see  the 
full  significance  of  the  character  and  the  life 
of  Christ  as  a  revelation  of  God,  without  the 
perspective  of  a  longer  time  and  without 
the  testing  of  history.  The  full  significance 
of  any  personality  is  not  to  be  grasped  at  once. 
We  may  be  sure  that  the  law  holds  in  rela- 
tion to  Christ  and  God's  revelation  in  him. 
Christ's  life  has  gained,  not  lost,  in  signifi- 
cance, as  his  weight  in  human  history  has  be- 
come plain. 

2.  Nor  is  it  to  be  forgotten  that  the  final 
forces  even  in  external  nature,  as  modern 
science  seems  to  teach  us,  are  all  unseen. 
They  are  not  as  they  seem  to  us  in  the  first 
testimony  of  the  senses.     The  real  facts  con- 


88  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

cerning  air  pressure,  the  motion  of  the  earth, 
the  atomic  constitution  of  nature,  the  ether 
vibrations,  and  many  other  similar  phenomena, 
are  not  present  to  us  in  the  direct  evidence  of 
the  senses.  They  are  reached  by  inference 
and  experiment,  and  accepted  by  us  on  such 
a  basis.  Even  the  material  facts,  in  other 
words,  are  not  here  so  immediately  given  as 
we  are  in  the  habit  of  thinking. 

Moreover,  our  knowledge  of  the  outer  world 
through  sensations  is  not  so  different  from  the 
knowledge  of  the  spiritual  world  that  comes 
through  the  inner  data  of  our  psychic  life,  as 
we  often  suppose.  There  is  no  immediate 
knowledge  or  revelation  in  either  case.  Both 
require  a  long  time  in  the  building  up ;  both 
involve  comparison,  memory,  reason. 
Neither  the  outer  world  nor  the  spiritual 
meaning  of  our  inner  experiences  can  be  given 
to  us  outright.  There  is  certainly  no  literal 
transfer  of  definite  thoughts  from  external 
nature  to  the  minds  of  men.  Their  own  inner 
activity,  reflection,  and  inference  are  re- 
quired even  there.  And  if  there,  we  need  not 
be  surprised  to  find  the  same  law  holding  in 
the  realm  of  the  spirit. 

3.  Even  in  the  closest  personal  intercourse, 
it  is  well  to  notice  that  there  is  no  literal  trans- 


THE  QUESTION  OF  PRAYER  89 

fer  of  thought  or  feeling  from  one  mind  to  the 
other.  The  self-revelation  of  one  person  to 
another  cannot  be  made  by  words  only,  how- 
ever carefully  and  accurately  words  are  used 
by  the  revealing  personality.  The  words  at 
best  are  but  signs  of  inner  mental  processes, 
which  the  other  must  interpret  out  of  a  some- 
what different  experience.  There  must  be, 
thus,  a  creative,  cooperative  activity  on  both 
sides,  and  the  result  is  quite  certain  to  be  the 
production  in  the  second  person,  not  of  an 
exact  replica  of  the  mental  state  of  the  first, 
but  only  a  measurable  approximation  to  that 
state.  This  necessity  for  active  cooperation 
on  our  part  in  any  personal  revelation  sug- 
gests how  impossible  the  common  conception 
of  an  absolutely  passive  reception  of  a  personal 
revelation  from  God  must  be.  We  are  thus 
often  expecting,  in  relation  to  God,  what  oc- 
curs nowhere  else  in  our  experience,  not  even 
in  the  closest  personal  relations.  It  is,  in- 
deed, in  this  way  that  a  truly  living  revelation 
from  God  is  possible  —  a  revelation  that 
changes  and  grows  with  our  growth.  There 
must  be,  in  any  case,  in  revelation  from  God, 
active  cooperation  on  our  part ;  and  we  need 
not  be  disturbed  to  find  this  true.  It  is  in 
line  with  a  true  understanding  of  all  our  ex- 


90  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

perience.  Even  if  we  thought  of  God  as 
speaking  to  us  in  definite  words,  these  would 
require  interpretation.  The  active  interpre- 
tive element  in  religion  is  thus  unavoidable. 

4.  Moreover,  if  there  be  a  God  at  all,  and 
religion  have  any  genuine  justification,  God 
can  be  no  merely  incidental  and  occasional 
factor  in  the  life  of  men.  If  the  reason  of  the 
case  and  men's  needs  are  to  be  truly  met, 
God's  cooperation  and  guidance  must  be  con- 
stant, not  simply  here  and  there  by  some 
marked  intervention ;  just  as  there  can  be  no 
adequate  and  fundamental  religious  interpre- 
tation of  evolution  that  does  not  recognize 
that  God  is  essentially  active  at  every  stage 
and  not  alone  at  certain  apparent  breaks  in 
the  evolutionary  series.  A  God  who  is  only 
occasionally  needed  is  no  God  at  all.  Our 
conception  of  divine  revelation  and  relation 
to  God,  therefore,  must  be  consistent  with 
some  thought  of  his  constant  activity  in  hu- 
man life ;  though  this  does  not  mean  that  all 
stages  of  revelation  are  to  be  put  on  a  dead 
level,  any  more  than  we  are  to  deny  the  exist- 
ence of  certain  critical  points  in  the  evolution 
process. 

5.  But,  while  men  need  the  sense  of  God's 
constant  relation  to  human  life,  it  is  still  true, 


THE  QUESTION   OF   PRAYER  91 

as  was  implied  at  the  beginnning  of  this  sec- 
tion, that  the  best  association  even  between 
men  for  character  and  happiness  is  not  an 
obtrusive  one.  It  should  be  constant,  indeed, 
and  intimate,  but  should  still  guard  most 
jealously  our  freedom  and  our  individuality, 
never  desiring  to  force  its  way  or  its  will. 
Every  personal  relation  requires  such  care  on 
the  part  of  the  stronger  personality.  It  is 
preeminently  necessary  that  this  should  be 
the  case  in  God's  relation  to  us.  If  our  free- 
dom is  not  to  be  quite  overridden  and  true 
moral  character  made  impossible  for  us, 
God  must  even  take  pains  to  hide  his  working, 
as  would  a  wise,  strongly  influential  friend. 
This  consideration  is  fundamental  in  its 
bearing  on  our  problem. 

':  It  is  thus  literally  true  to  say  that  we  need 
an  invisible  God.  We  are  to  walk  by  faith, 
not  by  sight.  The  fact  seems  to  be  that,  as 
we  mount  higher  in  any  sphere,  our  life  is 
and  must  be  increasingly  one  of  faith.  In 
the  intellectual,  the  aesthetic,  the  moral,  the 
religious  life,  we  have  our  occasional  times  of 
clear  vision  of  our  goal,  followed  by  longer 
periods  when  we  have  to  go  forward  in  faith 
in  the  goal  once  seen.  As  Rendel  Harris 
says,   we   cannot   avoid   "the   dark   night  of 


92  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

faith,  when  every  step  has  to  be  taken  in  ab- 
solute dependence  upon  God,  and  assurance 
that  the  vision  was  truth  and  no  lie."  We 
have  to  learn  to  believe  in  the  unseen  spiritual 
forces,  in  the  constant  working  of  the  invisible 
God.  This  unobtrusiveness  of  God  seems 
then  to  be  necessary  to  our  spiritual  training. 
There  would  else  be  such  excess  of  motive  as 
would  virtually  annul  our  freedom  and  our 
character.  We  need  to  learn  fidelity  to  the 
lesser  light. 

6.  Another  consideration  deserves  atten- 
tion. It  is  worth  while  for  one  to  make  clear 
to  himself  just  what  kind  of  answer  he  really 
wants  to  his  prayers,  when  he  thinks  the 
matter  through.  He  may  find  his  need  here 
quite  other  than  he  first  imagined  it  to  be. 
For  if  one  is  truly  praying  for  the  fulfilment 
of  Christ's  supreme  purposes  concerning  him- 
self and  other  men,  if  he  is  truly  praying  the 
Lord's  Prayer,  the  answer  plainly  must  be 
found  chiefly  in  life,  in  character.  It  cannot 
possibly  be  given  simply  in  any  kind  of  emo- 
tional experience,  though  such  an  experience 
in  a  given  case  may  be  a  useful  help  to  char- 
acter. The  best  and  completest  answer  to 
a  truly  Christian  prayer  means  time,  growth, 
and  many  human  choices  of  the  right.     Our 


THE  QUESTION  OF   PRAYER  93 

point  of  view  as  to  prayer  is  quite  too  likely 
to  be  low,  too  personal,  too  selfish,  too  much 
concerned  with  things  and  with  pleasant 
experiences,  instead  of  with  the  final  goal  of 
"union  with  the  will  of  God."  So  that  we 
may  fail  to  give  due  weight  to  the  most  direct 
and  important  answers  of  all. 

We  are,  then,  perhaps  not  looking  in  the 
right  direction  for  the  answers  to  our  prayers, 
for  evidence  of  real  relation  to  God.  Are 
there  no  indications  that  God  has  been  at 
work  in  our  lives,  not  only  at  the  time  of 
prayer  and  in  conscious  feelings  that  we 
seemed  able  to  connect  with  the  prayer,  but 
in  more  constant  and  fundamental  ways  ? 
Have  there  not  been  the  thousand  different 
quickenings,  glimpses,  times  of  vision,  and 
*' sober  and  strenuous  moods  .^"  Have  there 
been  no  leadings,  no  changed  attitudes  and 
longings,  no  altered  purposes,  no  growth,  no 
increasing  assurance  of  spiritual  things  and  of 
Christ's  supreme  significance,  no  enlarging 
place  in  our  lives  for  the  motives  coming  from 
Christ's  life  and  teaching,  no  deepening  of 
unselfish  sympathy  and  enthusiasm  for  the 
great  social  goals  of  the  Kingdom  ^  Is  the 
relation  to  God  not  coming  to  mean  more  and 
more  as  we  go  on  ?     The  fruit  of  the  Spirit 


94  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

is  the  best  evidence  of  the  working  of  the 
Spirit  of  God. 

A  word  should  be  added  concerning  the 
difficulty  many  feel  about  intercessory  prayer. 
It  is  not  possible  to  doubt  Christ's  practice  of 
intercessory  prayer.  The  demand  for  it  too 
is  grounded  in  our  very  natures.  We  simply 
cannot  help  praying  for  those  whom  we  love. 
Is  there  any  peculiar  difficulty  involved  in 
intercessory  prayer  ?  As  I  have  dealt  with 
this  question  somewhat  at  length  elsewhere/ 
I  may  very  briefly  say  here  that  intercessory 
prayer  seems  to  me  only  to  carry  to  its  legiti- 
mate conclusion  the  well-recognized  condition 
of  a  moral  world  —  that  we  are  members  one  of 
another.  We  do,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  condition 
one  another's  lives  at  multiplied  points.  May 
I  through  God  in  prayer  continue  to  count  for 
good  in  the  life  of  my  friend,  even  when  distance 
or  misunderstanding  separates  us  ?  It  would 
seem  a  very  impotent  and  inadequate  God  who 
would  not  make  that  true.  And  that  it  should 
be  true  would  be  only  to  carry  through  to  the 
end  the  common  law  of  the  moral  universe, 
of  our  constant  mutual  influence.  If  this  be 
true,  intercessory  prayer  seems  to  involve  no 
peculiar  intellectual  difficulty. 

*  Theology  and  the  Social  Consciousness,  pp.  164-167. 


THE  QUESTION  OF   PRAYER  95 

In  the  question  of  suffering  and  sin,  we  were 
facing  a  fundamental  problem  for  every  ideal 
view ;  in  the  question  of  prayer,  a  funda- 
mental problem  for  any  religious  view  of  the 
world.  We  turn  now  to  the  central  problem 
of  the  Christian  religion  —  the  question  of  our 
conception  of  Christ. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  QUESTION  OF  CHRIST  — THE  CENTRAL 
FACT  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  RELIGION: 
HOW  ARE  WE  TO  THINK  ABOUT 
CHRIST  ? 

There  is  no  intention,  in  this  chapter,  to  go 
into  an  elaborate  apologetic  concerning  Christ ; 
but  rather  to  state  as  simply  and  directly  as 
possible  how  the  Christian  man  naturally 
thinks  of  Christ.^ 

We  who  call  ourselves  Christians  take  the 
name  precisely  because  we  mean  to  be,  first 
and  foremost,  disciples  of  Jesus  Christ.  And 
we  take  this  purpose  on,  just  because,  in  turn, 
we  believe  that  Christ  is  the  supreme  per- 
sonality of  history,  —  so  supreme  that  we 
do  not  know  how  better  to  describe  the  ideal 
life  than  to  say,  that  it  should  be  a  life  that 
steadily  learns  of  Christ. 

1  The  background  of  the  line  of  thought  here  presented  may  be  found 
in  the  author's  Theology  a^id  the  Social  Consciousness,  pp.  184-201,  and 
Religion  as  Life,  pp.  1 16-133.  Cf.  also  Letters  on  the  Greatness  and 
Simplicity  of  the  Christian  Faith,  pp.  179-199. 

96 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CHRIST  97 


The  Best  Life 

First  of  all,  we  believe  that  in  Christ  we 
have  the  best  life  that  the  world  has  ever 
seen.  It  seems  to  us  that  the  great  historian 
Ranke  simply  states  the  common  conviction 
of  men  when  he  says,  "More  guiltless  and  more 
powerful,  more  exalted  and  more  holy,  has 
naught  ever  been  on  earth  than  his  conduct, 
his  life,  and  his  death.  The  human  race 
knows  nothing  that  could  be  brought  even 
afar  off  into  comparison  with  it."  Let  one 
who  is  in  earnest  to  reach  for  himself  the 
highest  character,  ask  himself  to  what  other 
life  he  could  turn  for  a  more  perfect  example 
of  what  the  highest  living  should  be.  It  is  an 
unspeakable  gift,  that  there  should  simply 
have  been  such  a  life,  and  that  a  sufficient 
record  of  it  should  have  come  down  to  us 
through  men  inspired  by  him,  so  that  we  can 
still  feel  the  majesty  and  the  drawing  power 
of  his  life.  If  only  this  one  thing  could  be 
said  about  Christ,  it  would  still  justify  the  men 
who  are  in  dead  earnest  for  character  in  count- 
ing themselves,  first  and  foremost,  disciples 
of  Christ,   and  in  associating  themselves  to- 


98  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

gether  that  the  Christlike  life  might  more  and 
more  prevail  among  men.  The  Christian 
man  then  is  first  of  all  to  think  about  Christ 
as  the  best  life  that  the  world  has  seen.  And 
that  is  a  most  significant  fact. 

II 

The  Best  Ideals  and  Standards 

But  it  would  hardly  be  possible  that  Christ 
should  have  been  the  best  life,  and  that  he 
should  not  at  the  same  time  have  shown  to 
men  the  best  ideals  and  standards,  whether 
for  the  life  of  the  individual  or  the  life  of  the 
group  or  nation.  Life  is  so  inevitably  one, 
that  it  is  hardly  possible  to  dissociate  a  man's 
life  from  his  ideals  and  standards.  The  best 
life  can  be  the  best  life  only  if  it  have  the  best 
ideals  and  standards.  Jesus'  conception  of 
God  as  Father — as  endless  self-giving,  sacri- 
ficial love  —  contains  in  itself  the  highest  con- 
ceivable ideal  for  character,  an  ideal  that  can- 
not be  denied,  and  one  which  men  must  regard 
as  the  goal  for  all  life,  individual  and  social.  It 
is  the  application  of  this  single  great  ideal  and 
standard  of  Christ's  that  is  so  infinitely  needed 
in  all  the  relations  of  life.  The  Christian 
man  may  well  emphasize,  in  the  second  place, 


THE   QUESTION  OF   CHRIST  99 

therefore,  in  his  witness  to  Christ,  that  Christ 
presents  incomparably  the  best  ideals  and 
standards  of  life. 

Ill 

The  Best  Insight  into  the  Laws  of  Life 

And  the  best  life  and  the  best  ideals  and 
standards  naturally  carry  with  them  the  best 
insight  into  the  laws  of  life.  We  are  coming 
to  understand  in  our  own  time  that  the  es- 
sential thing  for  conquest  in  any  realm, 
whether  of  nature  or  of  human  nature,  is  that 
one  should  understand  the  laws  involved, 
should  know  the  conditions  involved  in  those 
laws,  and  then  by  the  fulfilment  of  those 
conditions  should  gain  mastery  of  the  forces 
in  the  realm  concerned.  It  is  thus  that  mod- 
ern science  has  made  its  conquest  over  the 
forces  of  nature ;  it  is  thus  that  victories  must 
be  won  in  the  difficult  problems  of  human 
society.  Our  great  social  surveys  are  simply 
an  earnest  attempt  to  apply  this  scientific 
method,  so  successful  in  the  realm  of  nature, 
to  the  realm  of  society.  In  like  manner, 
in  the  realm  of  one's  own  individual  life,  for 
the  highest  victory,  one  needs  to  know  the 
laws  both  of  body  and  of  mind,  —  the  laws  of 


lOO  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

the  spiritual  life  where  our  final  victory  must 
be  won. 

Nothing  is  more  wonderful  about  the  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  than  the  sureness  of  his  insight 
into  the  fundamental  laws  of  life,  even  when 
measured  by  the  best  that  modern  knowledge 
has  to  give.  He  is  no  one-sided  fanatic. 
He  knows  the  complexity  of  life.  He  has 
clear  discernment  of  the  unity  of  man's  spirit, 
and  of  the  certainty  with  which  failure  at  one 
point  invites  failure  at  every  other,  and  vic- 
tory at  one  point  helps  to  victory  at  every 
other.  He  sees  as  clearly  as  the  modern  psy- 
chologist the  central  importance  of  the  will 
and  action,  and  consequently  never  allows 
his  conception  of  religion  for  an  instant  to 
luck  ethical  quality.  He  knows  that  the  great 
reality  in  the  world  is  persons  and  personal 
life.  And  just  because  this  is  true,  he  knows 
that  the  one  all-inclusive  law  will  be  the  law 
of  unselfish  love  in  all  these  relations.  The 
method  of  his  kingdom,  therefore,  is  the 
method  of  the  contagion  of  the  good  life 
through  mental  and  spiritual  fellowship.  But 
the  good  life  must  be  genuinely  good.  It 
must  be  sound  and  have  inner  integrity. 
He  sees,  therefore,  just  as  clearly  that  besides 
mental    and    spiritual    fellowship  there  must 


THE  QUESTION  OF   CHRIST  loi 

be  also  mental  and  spiritual  independence  on 
the  part  of  the  individual.  These  are  simple 
illustrations  of  Christ's  insight  into  the  laws 
of  life.  The  world  simply  does  not  know  any 
moral  teacher  to  whom  it  can  go  with  such 
certainty  of  unerring  insight  at  this  most 
vital  of  all  points.  It  brings  great  assurance 
to  the  learner  of  Christ,  that  he  can  believe 
that  Christ  offers  also  the  best  insight  into 
the  laws  of  life. 

IV 

The  Best  Convictions 

It  is  perhaps  to  say  essentially  the  same 
thing  in  different  words  —  though  it  seems  to 
me  worth  saying  in  this  different  fashion  — 
when  one  says  that  Christ  offers  to  men  the 
best  convictions.  Because  great  and  vital 
decisions  do  not  spring  up  out  of  vacancy; 
they  must  inevitably  root  finally  in  great 
convictions.  The  measure  in  which  a  man 
may  finally  count  with  his  fellows  goes  right 
back  to  the  strength  and  depth  and  signifi- 
cance of  his  convictions.  And  man  has  no 
more  imperative  need  than  the  need  of  first- 
hand grip  on  realities  ;  that  he  should  be  able 
to  believe  with  all  his  soul  in  something  worth 


I02  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

believing.  Now,  it  has  been  already  implied 
that  Christ  stands  for  the  mightiest  convic- 
tions for  which  a  man  can  stand  :  the  con- 
victions of  the  love  of  God  and  of  the  life  of 
love.  Within  these  convictions  are  contained 
the  highest  ideals  and  hopes  that  men  can 
cherish.  There  is  a  great  new  tie  between 
a  man  and  Christ  when  he  perceives  that 
Christ  offers  to  men  the  priceless  gift  of  the 
best  convictions. 

V 

The  Best  Hopes 

Moreover,  because  Christ  brings  to  men  the 
best  life,  the  best  ideals  and  standards,  the 
best  insight  into  the  laws  of  life,  and  the  best 
convictions,  he  can  bring  also  the  best  hopes. 
It  is  no  accident  that  the  highest  hopes  which 
the  human  race  cherishes  are  knit  up  so  indis- 
solubly  with  the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus. 
Just  because  the  character  of  Christ  is  so 
majestic  and  so  convincing,  we  give  and  can 
give  to  his  teaching  a  weight  not  otherwise 
conceivable.  Christ  does  not  simply  tell  us 
of  beautiful  dreams  and  visions,  but  he  does 
much  more  :  he  makes  us  able  to  believe 
in  these  highest  hopes  ;    he  makes  us  able  to 


THE  QUESTION  OF   CHRIST  103 

believe  in  the  immortal  life  —  in  endless 
growth  into  the  life  and  work  of  love,  both  here 
on  earth  and  in  the  life  to  come;  he  makes 
us  able  to  believe  in  the  continually  deepen- 
ing acquaintance  with  the  inexhaustible  God. 
The  human  imagination  simply  cannot  rise 
higher  in  its  conceptions  than  the  hopes  that 
Christ  has  made  possible  to  us.  This,  too, 
then  is  a  part  of  humanity's  testimony  to 
Christ:  that  he  makes  possible  to  men  the 
best  hopes. 

VI 

The  Best  Dynamic  for  Living 

And  the  person  who  offers  us  all  this  —  the 
best  life,  the  best  ideals  and  standards,  the  best 
insight  into  the  laws  of  life,  the  best  convic- 
tions, and  the  best  hopes  —  inevitably  thereby 
brings  to  us  at  the  same  time  the  best  dynamic 
for  a  like  life.  For  those  vital  decisions  in 
which  character  consists  root  unfailingly,  as 
we  have  seen,  in  great  inspiring  convictions  and 
hopes  and  associations,  and  these  in  the  highest 
degree  Christ  offers.  We  know  no  surer  road 
to  character  than  the  road  of  persistent  per- 
sonal association,  upon  which,  as  we  have  seen, 
Christ  everywhere  counts.    There  is  no  cheaper 


I04  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

way.  As  I  have  had  occasion  often  to  say,  we 
become  Inevitably  like  those  with  whom  we 
constantly  are,  to  whom  we  look  in  admiration 
and  love,  and  who  give  themselves  unstintedly 
to  us.  The  supreme  dynamic  of  life,  therefore, 
will  necessarily  be  association  with  the  best  life, 
with  its  best  ideals  and  insight  and  convic- 
tions and  hopes.  We  simply  do  not  know, 
even  in  our  modern  times,  any  surer  road  for 
any  man  into  the  highest  character  than  that 
he  should  put  himself  persistently  in  the  pres- 
ence of  Christ  in  the  Gospels  and  allow  the 
Spirit  of  God  to  reach  him  through  that  life ; 
to  feel  thus  its  drawing  power  until  it  becomes 
second  nature  to  think  about  life  as  Christ 
thought  about  it,  to  feel  as  he  felt,  and  to 
take  his  great  purposes  upon  him  in  a  contin- 
ually increasing  response  to  his  spirit.  Be- 
yond all  doubt,  the  world  knows,  in  the 
experience  of  the  centuries,  no  dynamic  for 
the  production  of  character  in  common  men 
and  women,  for  an  instant  to  be  compared 
with  the  influence  of  Christ.  Least  of  all, 
therefore,  may  the  Christian  man  forget 
that  Christ  has  proved  himself  beyond  all 
doubt  the  best  dynamic  for  character. 


THE  QUESTION  OF   CHRIST  105 

VII 

The  Best  Revelation  of  God 

Just  because  Christ  is  all  that  I  have  already 
said,  he  bears,  as  no  other  character  or  religion 
for  an  instant  can  bear,  the  severest  rational 
and  ethical  tests  of  even  the  modern  world. 
His  teaching  is  thoroughly  rational,  and  his 
teaching  is  unmistakably  ethical  through  and 
through.  We  have  no  occasion  to  correct 
either  his  conception  of  life  or  his  conception 
of  God.  And  he  becomes  thus  inevitably  for 
us  the  surest  revelation  of  God,  and  the  great- 
est persuasive  of  the  love  of  God.  If  we  are 
to  find  light  upon  the  character  of  God,  we 
must  find  it  in  the  greatest  facts  of  the  world. 
Unquestionably  the  great  facts  of  the  world 
are  persons,  and  the  greatest  facts  are  the 
greatest  persons  ;  and  the  supreme  fact  of  the 
world  must  be  the  supreme  person  of  history. 
And  if  even  a  part  of  what  I  have  been  saying 
concerning  Christ  is  true,  he  is,  among  these 
greatest  facts,  beyond  all  doubt  the  supreme 
world-fact  and  person,  and  thereby  the  surest 
revealer  of  God. 

It  is  difficult  to  overstate  the  value  of  the 
simple  fact  that  there  has  appeared  among 


io6  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

men  a  man  in  whom  we  can  feel  that  God  su- 
premely reveals  himself ;  so  that  we  have  our 
best  conception  of  the  character  of  God  in 
saying  that  God,  it  seems  to  us,  must  be  like 
Christ,  and  that  to  have  a  God  with  a  charac- 
ter like  Christ  would  be  to  have  a  God  in  whom 
the  human  spirit  could  rest.  Here  again,  we 
know  no  surer  road,  even  for  the  modern 
man,  to  come  to  the  certainty  of  God  and  to 
rest  in  him,  than  to  put  himself  with  honest 
heart  in  the  presence  of  the  life  of  Christ,  to 
allow  that  life  to  make  upon  him  its  natural, 
legitimate  impression.  In  no  way  more 
surely  may  a  man  come  to  certainty  of  God 
and  of  relation  to  him,  to  find  growing  upon 
him  the  conviction  of  God  and  of  the  spiritual 
world,  to  feel  that  he  finds  God  and  God  finds 
him. 

It  is  this  great  simple  fact  of  Christ  as  the 
supreme  revealer  of  God  that  we  teach  con- 
cerning Christ  when  we  teach  his  divinity. 
God  is  like  Christ.  Now,  we  give  Christ  this 
supreme  place  only  when  we  clearly  recognize 
that  he  is  to  be  made  supreme  within  the 
Bible  as  well  as  without  the  Bible.  No  man 
is  truly  voicing  the  divinity  of  Christ  who 
puts  others  —  however  great  —  on  a  level 
with   him    as    revealers   of  God.     The   great 


THE   QUESTION   OF    CHRIST  107 

confession  of  Christ,  therefore,  may  be  ex- 
pressed in  Luther's  words:  "For  if  we  are 
certain  of  this  :  that  what  He  thinks,  speaks, 
and  wills,  the  Father  also  wills,  then  I  can 
defy  all  that  may  fight  and  rage  at  me.  For 
here  in  Christ  I  have  the  Father's  heart  and 
will."  Above  all  else,  therefore,  the  Christian 
man  will  prize  the  fact  that  Christ  is  the  su- 
preme revealer  of  God  and  the  supreme  per- 
suasive of  the  love  of  God. 

We  call  ourselves  Christians,  therefore,  be- 
cause even  in  this  modern  time,  —  nay,  partic- 
ularly in  this  modern  time,  for  no  age  has 
ever  needed  Christ  so  much,  —  the  most 
practical  and  certain  way  to  righteousness  of 
life,  to  fruitful  service,  to  strength  and 
beauty  of  spirit,  to  sacrificial  love,  to  God,  is 
Christ. 

These,  then,  are  the  great  outstanding 
claims  of  Christ  upon  the  love  and  loyalty 
of  men :  that  in  him  we  have  the  best  life, 
the  best  ideals  and  standards,  the  best  insight 
into  the  laws  of  life,  the  best  convictions,  the 
best  hopes,  the  best  dynamic  for  character, 
the  surest  revealer  of  God,  and  the  greatest 
persuasive  of  the  love  of  God  ;  and,  therefore, 
"the  most  precious  fact  in  history,  the  most 
precious  fact  our  life  contains." 


io8  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

If  we  may  count  upon  a  fundamental  pur- 
pose of  love  in  the  world,  upon  the  reality  of 
prayer,  and  upon  the  priceless  significance 
of  Christ,  we  are  prepared  to  face  with  suffi- 
cient light  the  practical  questions  of  life's 
fundamental  decision,  and  of  life's  fundamen- 
tal paradox. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   QUESTION    OF    LIFE'S    FUNDAMENTAL 
DECISION 

In  writing  of  life's  fundamental  decision,  I 
have  in  mind  those  great  essential  decisions 
that  themselves  make  and  form  character  — 
the  decisions  without  which  life  largely  loses 
all  meaning  and  value  whatever.  A  man  has 
no  right  to  forget,  either  for  himself  or  for 
all  those  whom  he  loves,  the  significance  of 
these  crisis  decisions.  For  we  certainly  shall 
not  drift  into  large  achievements  in  life  and 
work.  Nervelessly  waiting  for  something  to 
turn  up  works  no  better  in  the  realm  of  the 
spirit  than  in  the  realm  of  economics.  We 
simply  cannot  live  great  lives  in  petty  bits  to 
which  only  our  moods  stir  us.  There  must  be 
great  embracing  decisions  that  cover  large 
tracts  of  our  lives,  indeed  that  finally  cover 
the  whole  expanse  of  life.  As  surely  as  the 
student  needs  the  general  purpose  to  attend 
all  his  classes,  as  over  against  the  futile  rais- 
ing of  the  question  of  attendance  concerning 

109 


no  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

every  hour,  so  surely  in  all  significant  living 
must  there  be  great  ultimate  choices  as  over 
against  the  smaller  proximate  choices  of 
life. 

It  becomes,  thus,  a  very  serious  matter  for 
any  man  that  he  should  not  be  looking  out  on 
life  without  the  grip  of  an  all-embracing  pur- 
pose. It  supremely  concerns  him  that  the 
preparatory  years  of  education  should  not 
have  closed  upon  him  without  a  clear,  con- 
scious, avowed  determination  to  follow  the 
highest  life  he  knows.  There  is  no  safety  nor 
promise  for  a  drifting  life.  It  is  of  these 
undergirding  decisions,  therefore,  that  I  wish 
to  write,  clearly  conscious  that  a  man  will 
be  worth  little  to  himself  or  to  the  world 
without  this  fundamental  decision  of  char- 
acter. 

What  are  the  two  kinds  of  lives  between 
which  all  must  choose  ?  It  is  significant  that 
the  experience  of  the  race  has  so  variously 
crystallized  its  expression  of  these  two  kinds 
of  lives.  For  it  shows  how  inevitable  some 
fundamental  decision  is.  It  is  as  inescapable 
as  the  omnipresence  of  God.  It  pursues  man 
to  his  last  covert,  and  compels  him  to  own, 
"Whither  shall  I  flee  from  thy  presence?" 


LIFE'S  FUNDAMENTAL  DECISION     iii 


Drifting  or  Steering 

In  the  first  place,  as  I  have  already  instinc- 
tively implied,  men  have  quite  naturally  and 
universally  compared  the  two  kinds  of  lives 
to  drifting  and  steering.  They  have  virtually 
asserted  here  the  necessity  that  a  man  should 
either  hold  or  surrender  the  helm  of  his  life  — 
should  either  have  adopted  some  real  goal, 
or  have  allowed  himself  aimlessly  to  drift. 
And  the  latter  form  of  life  has  seemed  to  men 
essentially  frivolous,  the  former,  essentially 
earnest.  That  is  simply  to  say  that  the  first 
great  decision  of  the  earnest  life  must  be  to 
have  decision  in  it.     As  Professor  James  says  : 

If  the  "searching  of  our  heart  and  reins"  be  the 
purpose  of  this  human  drama,  then  what  is  sought  seems 
to  be  what  effort  we  can  make.  He  who  can  make  none 
is  but  a  shadow ;  he  who  can  make  much  is  a  hero. 
The  huge  world  that  girdles  us  about  puts  all  sorts 
of  questions  to  us,  and  tests  us  in  all  sorts  of  ways. 
Some  of  the  tests  we  meet  by  actions  that  are  easy,  and 
some  of  the  questions  we  answer  in  articulately  formu- 
lated words.  But  the  deepest  question  that  is  ever 
asked  admits  of  no  reply  but  the  dumb  turning  of  the 
will  and  tightening  of  our  heart-strings  as  we  say,  "  Yes, 
I  will  even  have  it  so  .'" 


112  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

Put,  now,  in  contrast  with  this  dumb  de- 
termined will,  that  common  constant  ''eva- 
sion of  life's  proof"  to  which  we  all  are  tempted, 
that  cowardly  skulking  around  the  call  for 
decision,  that  instinctive  refusal  to  be  alone, 
quietly  to  think,  and  squarely  to  face  life's 
facts.     Life  requires  a  choice. 

II 

Domination  by  Feeling  or  by  Rational 
Purpose 

What  does  it  mean,  psychologically,  to  drift 
or  to  steer  one's  life  ?  It  may  be  said  prob- 
ably to  be  the  difference  between  allowing 
one's  life  to  be  dominated  by  momentary 
feeling  or  by  rational  purpose.  The  man  who 
is  willing  to  let  his  course  be  decided  in  every 
case  by  his  passing  mood  has  evidently  given 
up  any  rational  guidance  of  his  life.  He  may 
boast  himself  of  his  freedom,  but  he  is  really 
a  slave  of  his  circumstances ;  for  the  feeling 
which  he  allows  to  determine  his  course  is 
the  immediate  response  to  the  circumstances. 
The  man  for  whom  it  is  sufficient  reason  al- 
ways to  say  ''I  don't  feel  like  it,"  thereby  gives 
up  a  man's  life,  and  accepts  the  destiny  of  a 
chip  on  the  waters.  Moods  or  rational  pur- 
pose ?  that  is  the  inevitable  alternative. 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  DECISION     113 

III 

Loyalty  or  Disloyalty 

Or  one  may  put  the  contrast  between  the 
two  kinds  of  lives  which  men  have  always 
recognized  as  the  contrast  between  loyalty 
and  disloyalty ;  between  fidelity  and  treach- 
ery to  the  best  one  knows.  And  the  distinc- 
tion cuts  deep.  One  may  find  his  friend  very 
faulty,  very  imperfect,  even  vacillating,  and 
still  maintain  his  friendship  ;  but  the  one  thing 
that  a  personal  relation  cannot  stand  is  ulti- 
mate treachery  and  disloyalty.  Whatever 
one's  ideal,  whatever  his  professed  friendship, 
if  he  is  at  bottom  disloyal  to  it,  if  in  it  he  has 
proved  a  traitor,  he  has  thereby  passed 
under  the  judgment  of  his  own  eternal  con- 
tempt ;  he  has  committed  the  sin,  as  Profes- 
sor Royce  says,  which  is  essentially  unpar- 
donable. For  even  if  God  can  forgive  it,  the 
man  cannot  forgive  himself. 

What  I  point  out  (Professor  Royce  writes)  is  that,  if  a 
man  has  won  practically  a  free  and  conscious  view  of 
what  his  honor  requires  of  him,  the  reverse  side  of  this 
view  is  also  present.  This  reverse  side  takes  the  form 
of  knowing  what,  for  this  man  himself,  it  would  mean 
to  be  willfully  false  to  his  honor.  One  who  knows  that 
he  freely  serves  his  cause,  knows  that  he  could,  if  he 
I 


114  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

chose,  become  a  traitor.  And  if  indeed  he  freely 
serves  his  cause,  he  knows  whether  or  no  he  could  for- 
give himself  if  he  willfully  became  a  traitor.  Whoever, 
through  grace,  has  found  the  beloved  of  his  life,  and  now 
freely  lives  the  life  of  love,  knows  that  he  could,  if  he 
chose,  betray  his  beloved.  And  he  knows  what  esti- 
mate his  own  free  choice  now  requires  him  to  put  upon 
such  betrayal.  Choose  your  cause,  your  beloved,  and 
your  moral  ideal,  as  you  please.  What  I  now  point  out 
is  that  so  to  choose  is  to  imply  your  power  to  define 
what,  for  you,  would  be  the  unpardonable  sin  if  you 
committed  it.  This  unpardonable  sin  would  be 
betrayal. 

There  is  no  evading  the  contrast  between 
fidelity  and  betrayal. 

IV 

Following  One's  Conscience  or  Not 

Men  have  more  commonly  characterized 
the  two  types  of  life  as  the  life  of  following 
one's  conscience  or  not  following  it.  It  may 
be  a  very  imperfect  conscience  that  one  has ; 
his  sense  of  obligation  may  lack  in  enlighten- 
ment, in  breadth  and  depth  and  delicacy  of 
perception ;  nevertheless,  if  he  is  utterly  true 
to  the  best  he  knows,  he  is  living  a  life  dia- 
metrically opposed  to  the  life  of  the  man  who, 
with  keener  sense  of  duty,  deliberately  turns 
his  back  upon  it.     The  finally  testing  question 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  DECISION      115 

in  life  is  not  whether  you  measure  up  to  some 
other's  conscience  for  you,  but  simply  whether 
you  measure  up  to  your  own  conscience,  to 
your  own  vision  of  duty.  One's  own  unful- 
filled vision  !  —  this  it  is  that  condemns. 


The  Surrender  or  Not,  to  the  Scientific 
Spirit 

Or  one  might  put  the  difference  between 
the  essentially  earnest  and  the  essentially 
frivolous  life  by  saying  it  is  like  the  difference 
between  the  all-round  surrender  or  not,  to 
such  a  demand  as  the  scientific  spirit  makes  — 
the  demand  for  a  passion  for  reality,  a  passion 
for  truth,  and  for  utter  fidelity  to  it.  No 
generation  has  had  this  decision  thrust  upon 
it  more  imperatively  than  our  own.  The 
great  achievements  of  modern  science  are  just 
so  many  individual  and  detailed  demonstra- 
tions that  the  universe  belongs  to  the  men 
who  will  face  the  facts,  who  are  determined  to 
find  the  truth,  and  equally  determined  to  do 
the  truth.  No  other  generation  ever  had  so 
little  excuse  for  cherishing  prejudice,  and  for 
turning  aside  from  the  path  of  utter  intellec- 
tual integrity.     And  in  the  end  such  a  decision 


Ii6  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

must  carry  with  it  all  the  achievements  of 
man's  higher  moral  and  religious  life.  Man's 
whole  nature  is  so  intrinsically  a  unity  that  a 
genuine  passion  for  the  truth  cannot  fail  to 
affect  the  entire  life. 

VI 

The  Larger  Life  or  the  Lesser  Good 

Or,  once  again,  one  may  say  that  the  deci- 
sion for  which  life  calls  is  the  decision  between 
the  determination  to  seek  the  larger  life,  the 
utmost  of  which  we  are  capable,  even  under 
the  guise  of  self-denial,  or  constant  content 
with  the  lesser  good.  This  is  perhaps,  as  I 
have  elsewhere  pointed  out,^  the  special  form 
of  temptation  to  which  our  own  peculiarly 
complex  and  distracted  age  is  subject.  Our 
times  offer  the  choice  of  so  many  lesser  and  yet 
considerable  goods,  that  we  find  it  peculiarly 
easy  to  sacrifice  the  highest  to  what  is,  after 
all,  only  indifferently  good.  It  mightily  con- 
cerns the  earnest  man  that  he  should  have 
overcome  for  himself  this  deadly  peril  of  the 
lower  attainment. 

1  See  Religion  as  Life,  Chap.  I,  on  "  The  Peril  of  the  Lesser 
Good." 


LIFE'S  FUNDAMENTAL  DECISION     117 

VII 

Wilful  or  Obedient 

From  a  little  different  point  of  view,  men 
have  often  characterized  the  two  types  of  life 
by  the  words  "wilful"  and  "obedient."  The 
words  represent,  no  doubt,  in  part,  the  differ- 
ence between  two  natural  temperaments  — 
the  temperament  of  self-assertion,  and  the 
temperament  of  self-surrender.  And  so  far 
as  it  is  only  this  contrast  that  is  in  mind,  we 
have  no  right  to  say  that  the  true  life  lies  in 
either  the  one  direction  or  the  other.  All 
true  living  involves  both  self-assertion  and 
self-surrender;  both  individual  independence 
and  fellowship  with  other  men.  But  back  of 
the  terms  "wilful"  and  "obedient,"  there 
lies  a  more  fundamental  ethical  distinction  — 
the  distinction  between  the  selfishly  wilful 
life  and  the  life  which  is  willing  to  subordinate 
its  own  selfish  "want"  and  will  to  the  larger 
considerations  of  the  general  good.  An  es- 
sentially wilful  life  is  one  to  which  many  of  us 
find  ourselves  greatly  tempted,  but  it  is  not 
the  less  indubitably  a  life  essentially  wrong  and 
unworthy.  It  concerns  the  man  who  is  am- 
bitious for  the  best,  to  make  certain  that  he  is 
not  leading  a  simply  wilful  life;    that  he  is 


ii8  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

not  mistaking  his  own  selfish  obstinacy  for 
conscientious  scruples.  "Great  and  sacred," 
says  Martineau,  "is  obedience;  he  who  is 
not  able,  in  the  highest  majesty  of  manhood, 
to  obey,  with  clear  and  open  brow,  a  Law 
higher  than  himself,  is  barren  of  all  faith  and 
love;  and  tightens  his  chains,  moreover,  in 
struggling  to  be  free." 

VIII 

Following  Duty  or  Pleasure 

Lowell  phrases  the  contrast,  in  his  poem 
"The  Parting  of  the  Ways,"  as  the  contrast 
between  the  following  of  duty  or  the  following 
of  pleasure.  Doubtless  this  contrast,  too,  has 
often  been  used  in  a  false  and  unwarranted 
fashion.  In  a  universe  that  is  the  creation  of 
a  righteous  God,  it  cannot  be  that  duty  and 
happiness  shall  always  be  dissociated.  And 
unquestionably  there  has  been  much  false 
reasoning  upon  this  seeming  contrast.  But 
Lowell  himself  illustrates  in  his  poem  how 
pleasure  followed  for  its  own  sake  proves 
wholly  disillusioning,  and  how  duty  followed 
in  indifi"erence  to  pleasure  gives  the  unex- 
pected and  great  reward  of  happiness.  And 
the  old  contrast  has  still  its  great  element  of 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  DECISION     119 

truth.  For  he  who  makes  pleasure  his  aim 
will  certainly  live  an  unworthy  life.  And  he 
who  is  in  dead  earnest,  on  the  other  hand,  to 
find  out  what  the  call  of  duty,  ^' stern  daughter 
of  God,"  is,  and  to  obey  it,  will  live  not  only 
a  life  of  worthiness,  but  will  find  in  it  the  deep- 
est satisfaction  that  life  can  give.  To  make 
duty  grim  and  sour  is  doubtless  a  kind  of 
implicit  blasphemy,  for  it  denies  that  God's 
will  is  a  loving  will.  But  one  must  just  as 
straightly  and  squarely  recognize  that  for  a 
full-orbed  man  to  devote  his  life  to  the  pur- 
suit of  pleasure  is  essential  failure.  For  duty 
means  the  call  of  a  man's  own  highest  ideal. 
When  he  fails  to  follow  that,  he  fails  indeed. 

IX 

Taking  on  or  Refusing  the  Will  of  God 

This  implies  the  contrast,  that  the  religious 
man  is  in  the  habit  of  making,  between  taking 
on  or  refusing  the  will  of  God  as  the  supreme 
law  of  one's  life.  If  there  be  such  a  God  at 
all  as  Christ  reveals,  there  can  be  no  broader 
or  more  fundamental  way  than  this,  of  putting 
the  contrast  between  the  lives  of  men.  Men 
of  the  religious  spirit  have  instinctively  felt 
that  a  true  man  ought  to  be  able  to  say,  after 


120  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

Christ,  "  I  am  come,  not  to  do  mine  own  will 
but  the  will  of  him  that  sent  me"  ;  and  that 
it  belongs  to  the  very  essence  of  life  so  to 
choose  the  will  of  God,  "with  that  stoop  of  the 
soul  which  in  bending  upraiseth  it  too."  Let 
a  man,  now,  make  clear  to  himself  what  the 
mere  presence  of  such  a  ruling  purpose  in  his 
life  would  do.  If  I  truly  have  just  one  aim 
in  every  situation  —  the  aim  to  know  and  to 
do  the  will  of  God  —  how  certainly  will  the 
entire  atmosphere  of  my  life  be  affected  by 
this  ruling  purpose.  As  I  have  elsewhere 
pointed  out,  such  a  supreme  purpose  to  know 
and  do  the  will  of  God,  utterly  taken  on, 
thereby  lifts  the  life  above  personal  caprice 
and  prejudice.  It  inevitably  clears  one's 
judgment.  It  makes  a  sure  road  to  the 
knowledge  of  all  needful  vital  truth.  It  brings 
singleness  and  simplicity  —  the  very  secret 
of  greatness  —  into  the  soul.  Such  single- 
minded  devotedness  to  the  one  duty  in  hand 
gives  great  power  of  work  as  well,  and  great 
relief  from  anxious  responsibility.  And  so 
far  as  one  has  thrown  himself  with  all  his 
soul  into  line  with  the  eternal  plans  of  God, 
so  far  he  may  know  that  the  permanence  and 
triumph  of  the  divine  purpose  are  his.  For 
"he  that  doeth  the  will  of  God  abideth  for- 
ever." 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  DECISION     121 

Speak,  History  !  who  are  life's  victors  ? 

Unroll  thy  long  annals  and  say  — 
Are  they  those  whom  the  world  called  the  victors,  who 

won  the  success  of  a  day  ? 
The   martyrs   or   Nero  ?     The    Spartans   who   fell    at 

Thermopylae's  tryst, 
Or  the  Persians  and  Xerxes  ?     His  judges  or  Socrates  ? 

Pilate  or  Christ  ? 

X 

Deep-going  Ethical  Decision,  even  with- 
out Religious  Faith 

Even  when  one's  religious  conviction  is 
seriously  clouded,  a  deep-going  ethical  deci- 
sion that  confronts  the  two  kinds  of  lives  and 
chooses  with  all  one's  power  the  right,  not  only 
solves  the  central  issue  of  life,  but  may  bring 
as  well  a  great  new  sense  of  relation  to  God, 
as  in  Dr.  Bushnell's  own  case.  Dr.  Bushnell's 
sermon  upon  "The  Dissolving  of  Doubts" 
was  the  outcome  of  his  own  experience.  In 
the  year  183 1  he  was  a  tutor  in  Yale  College. 

The  winter  was  marked  by  a  religious  revival.  (I 
quote  his  life.)  What,  then,  in  this  great  revival  was 
this  man  to  do  ?  and  what  was  to  become  of  him .? 
Here  he  was  in  the  glow  of  his  ambition  for  the  future, 
tasting  keenly  of  a  new  success,  his  fine  passage  at  arms 
in  the  editorial  chair  of  a  New  York  daily,  ready  to  be 
admitted  to  the  bar,  successful  and  popular  as  a  College 


122  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

Instructor,  but  all  at  sea  in  doubt,  and  default  reli- 
giously. That  baptism  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  of  fire 
compassed  him  all  about.  When  the  work  was  at  its 
height,  he  and  his  division  of  students,  who  fairly 
worshipped  him,  stood  unmoved  apparently,  when  all 
beside  were  in  a  glow. 

It  was  in  the  chapel  of  Yale  College,  appro- 
priately, that  Dr.  Bushnell,  years  after,  in  the 
sermon  mentioned  above,  drew  the  sketch 
of  his  own  experience,  as  that  of  another. 

A  kind  of  leaden  aspect  overhangs  the  world.  Till, 
finally,  pacing  his  chamber  some  day,  there  comes  up 
suddenly  the  question,  "Is  there  then  no  truth  that  I 
do  believe  ?"  "Yes,  there  is  this  one,  now  that  I  think 
of  it;  there  is  a  distinction  of  right  and  wrong  that 
I  never  doubted,  and  I  see  not  how  I  can ;  I  am  even 
quite  sure  of  it.'*  Then  forthwith  starts  up  the  ques- 
tion, "Have  I  then  ever  taken  the  principle  of  right  for 
my  law  ?  I  have  done  right  things  as  men  speak ;  have 
I  ever  thrown  my  life  out  on  the  principle  to  become  all 
it  requires  of  me?"  "No,  I  have  not,  consciously,  I 
have  not.  Ah  !  then,  here  is  something  for  me  to  do ! 
No  matter  what  becomes  of  my  questions  —  nothing 
ought  to  become  of  them,  if  I  cannot  take  a  first  prin- 
ciple, so  inevitably  true  and  live  in  it."  The  very  sug- 
gestion seems  to  be  a  kind  of  revelation.  It  is  even  a 
relief  to  feel  the  conviction  it  brings.  "Here  then,"  he 
says,  "will  I  begin.  If  there  is  a  God,  as  I  rather  hope 
there  is,  and  very  dimly  believe,  he  is  a  right  God.  If 
I  have  lost  him  in  wrong,  perhaps  I  shall  find  him  In 
right.     Will  he  not  help  me }    or  perchance,  even  be 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL   DECISION      123 

discovered  to  me?"  Now  the  decisive  moment  is 
come.  He  drops  on  his  knees,  and  there  he  prays  to 
the  dim  God,  dimly  felt,  confessing  the  dimness  for 
honesty's  sake,  and  asking  for  help  that  he  may  begin  a 
right  life.  He  bows  himself  on  it,  as  he  prays,  choosing 
it  to  be  henceforth  his  unalterable,  eternal  endeavor. 
It  is  an  awfully  dark  prayer  in  the  look  of  it ;  but  the 
truest  and  best  he  can  make,  the  better  and  the  more 
true,  that  he  puts  no  orthodox  colors  on  it;  and  the 
prayer  and  the  vow  are  so  profoundly  meant  that  his 
soul  is  borne  up,  into  God's  help,  as  it  were,  by  some 
unseen  chariot,  and  permitted  to  see  the  opening  of 
heaven,  even  sooner  than  he  opens  his  eyes.  He  rises, 
and  it  is  as  if  he  had  gotten  wings.  The  whole  sky 
is  luminous  about  him.  It  is  the  morning,  as  it  were, 
of  a  new  eternity.  After  this,  all  troublesome  doubt  of 
God's  reality  is  gone,  for  he  has  found  him !  A  being 
so  profoundly  felt,  must  inevitably  be. 

The  light  would  not,  in  all  cases,  come  at 
once,  so  clearly  and  fully  as  here ;  but  it  will 
come !  To  bow  oneself  with  all  one's  soul  on 
this  basic  decision  to  do  the  right,  this  is  the 
challenge.     All  else  can  wait. 

XI 

The  Love  of  the  Father  or  the  Love  of 
THE  World 

Far  back  in  the  history  of  Christianity,  in 
the  strong  sense  of  the  conflict  of  the  spirit 
of  the  new  faith  with  the  old  spirit  in  the  world, 


124  FUNDAMENTAL   QUESTIONS 

there  arose  another  way  of  putting  this  con- 
trast between  lives  —  the  love  of  the  Father 
and  the  love  of  the  world.  "Love  not  the 
world,"  wrote  the  old  Christian  pastor, 
"neither  the  things  that  are  in  the  world. 
If  any  man  love  the  world,  the  love  of  the 
Father  is  not  in  him.  For  all  that  is  in  the 
world,  the  lust  of  the  flesh  and  the  lust  of 
the  eyes  and  the  vain  glory  of  life,  is  not  of  the 
Father,  but  is  of  the  world.  And  the  world 
passeth  away,  and  the  lust  thereof ;  but  he  that 
doeth  the  will  of  God  abideth  forever."  Jesus 
put  the  same  essential  contrast  in  his  words, 
"Ye  cannot  serve  God  and  mammon."  "No 
man  can  serve  two  masters."  It  seems  an 
old-fashioned  phrasing  to  us  now,  and  yet  it 
never  concerned  any  generation  more  than 
ours.  How  perennial  and  how  modern  the 
antithesis  still  is,  Mrs.  Comer's  recent  story, 
"The  Massey  Money,"  illustrated.  Old  Jabez 
Massey  is  nearing  his  end,  and  giving  his  last 
instructions  to  his  niece,  Jane  Dreer,  whom  he 
means  to  make  his  heir. 

"When  you  come  to  die,  you  must  pick  and  choose 
as  I  am  doing.  I  lay  it  on  you  that  you  find  me  a  lady 
for  your  heir!" 

"Your  notion  of  a  lady,  now,  —  what  is  it,  Jabez  ?" 
He  tottered  to  his  feet  again  and  lifted  his  hands 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  DECISION     125 

to  heaven.  His  face  was  terrible.  I  seemed  to  see 
something  hard  and  avaricious  tearing  its  way  up  from 
the  bottom  of  his  soul,  as  though  it  were  an  evil  spirit 
going  out  of  him. 

"On<?  whom  the  dollar  doesn^t  dominate,  by  God!^'  he 
cried,  and  fell  back  in  his  chair. 


"I  lay  it  on  you,  Jane,"  and  he  bent  forward  as  he 
spoke,  dragging  his  words  as  if  they  weighed  a  ton,  his 
sharp  old  eyes  boring  into  mine  like  gimlets  all  the 
while,  "I  lay  it  on  you,  Jane,  that  from  this  hour  you 
watch  yourself  until  you  see  what  the  Massey  money 
does  with  you.  When  you  come  to  your  end  of  days,  tell 
some  one,  whom  you  will,  what  it  has  been  to  you  and 
done  to  you.  Tell  them  the  very  truth  !  It  is  just 
common  money,  like  that  of  other  men,  no  better,  not 
much  worse  —  but  I  have  seen  it  work.  I  watched 
my  father  and  my  mother,  I  watched  my  brothers  and 
my  sister.  Most  of  all  I  watched  —  myself,"  said  he. 
"No  use  to  tell  you  what  I've  seen  —  no  use !  But  I 
lay  it  on  you  that  you  watch  and  see." 

And  now  Jane  Dreer,  near  the  end  of  her 
own  days,  is  recounting  to  Mayannah,  the 
widow  of  her  son  Harold,  her  own  experience 
with  the  Massey  money. 

"These  women  we  know  are  like  you  and  me, 
Mayannah,  cumberers  of  the  ground  !  It  used  to  make 
me  furious  some  nights  in  those  Southern  hotels,  the 
way  you  could  hear  'em  spatting  on  the  cold  cream  all 
down    the    corridor,    from    room    to    room.     And  yet 


126  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

there's  no  harm  in  cold  cream.  It's  only  that  the 
women  are  all  so  fat  and  idle  and  pampered,  and  never 
thinking  of  a  thing  except  to  spend.  I  came  to  spending 
too  late,  I  suppose.  I  can't  help  thinking  with  Jabez 
that  there  must  be  other  things  to  a  lady,  though  I 
don't  claim  there's  been  much  else  for  twenty  years  to 
me.  I  can  look  back  and  see  how  I  had  the  money  and 
I  spent  it,  but  it  never  made  me  really  rich.  I've  been 
an  idle,  discontented,  luxury-loving  old  woman,  rest- 
less, and  craving  I  don't  know  what.  If  anybody's 
been  the  better  for  my  being  alive  since  Harold  died, 
I  don't  know  who  it  is. 

"  I  suppose  you  want  the  Massey  money  as  much  as  I 
did,  and  plan  as  I  did  what  fine  things  you  are  going  to 
do  with  it."  .  .  .  "But  I  tell  you,  Mayannah  Dreer, 
you  aren't  Jabez  Massey's  lady  and  the  money  will 
not  go  to  you!"  .  .  .  She  looked  at  the  silent  figure 
across  the  room  for  a  response,  and  as  she  looked 
Mayannah  literally  flashed  to  her  feet.  .  .  . 

"Mother  Dreer,"  said  this  Mayannah  swiftly, 
"there  are  a  few  things  I  simply  have  to  tell  you  if  I  die 
for  it.  I  am  tired  of  turning  the  other  cheek.  It's 
true  I've  lived  with  you  for  the  last  ten  years,  and  you've 
grown  more  discontented  every  year.  /  can  tell  you 
what  the  money  has  done  for  you,  —  it  has  blinded  you 
to  the  very  thing  you  are  trying  to  find  !  You  will  never 
find  a  lady  while  you  look  for  her  with  Jane  Dreer's 
eyes  1  I  know  a  dozen  women  like  the  one  you  have 
been  hunting.  So  do  you,  but,  don't  you  see,  they 
can't  show  that  side  of  themselves  to  you.  You  don't 
call  it  out,  and  you  can't  see  it  when  it  shows  itself.  It 
has  got  to  be  in  you  before  you  can  know  it  is  in  them  ! 
—  And  that  is  Gospel  truth,  and  it  is  the  worst  thing  the 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  DECISION      127 

Massey  money  has  done  for  you.     Why,  you  wouldn't 
know  heaven  itself  if  you  saw  it  with  those  eyes !" 

And  then  Jane  Dreer,  in  reaction  from  her 
first  hot  and  sudden  anger,  finally  sees  more 
clearly  and  dictates  her  will : 

I  give  and  bequeath  all  property,  both  real  and 
personal,  of  which  I  may  die  possessed,  to  Mayannah 
Dreer,  once  wife,  now  widow,  of  my  son. 

And  this  I  do  in  fulfilment  of  a  private  compact 
between  myself  and  Jabez  Massey,  whose  heir  I  was,  to 
the  effect  that  his  wealth  should  pass  into  a  "lady's" 
hands.  I  have  searched  this  land  and  Europe  for  such 
an  one  as  he  described  to  me,  but  my  eyes  were  holden, 
for  I  found  not  one  among  the  people  who  fed  me  at 
their  tables  and  broke  bread  at  mine. 

At  last  I  saw  the  woman  I  was  seeking,  sitting  at  my 
hearth.  I  have  despised  her  parentage,  but  her  heart 
is  higher  than  my  heart.  She  is  gentle,  simple,  and 
tender;  she  is  fearless,  patient,  warm  of  heart.  She 
knows  neither  guile  nor  greed.  She  was  the  wife  of 
my  son,  and  she  worshipped  him.  To  whom  should  I 
give  this  wealth  if  not  to  her }  It  cannot  curse  her, 
for  she  is  beyond  the  domination  of  the  dollar. 

The  word  of  judgment  ever  is  : 

Thy  choice  was  earth ;   thou  didst  attest 

'Twas  fitter  spirit  should  subserve 

Flesh,  than  flesh  refine  to  nerve 

Beneath  the  spirit's  play. 

.  .  .  Thou  art, shut 

Out  of  the  heaven  of  spirit ;   glut 

Thy  sense  upon  the  world  ;   'Tis  thine 

Forever  —  take  it ! 


128  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

XII 

Selfish  or  Unselfish 

Our  age  of  the  social  consciousness  feels 
even  more  strongly  the  contrast  between  lives 
as  selfish  or  unselfish.  It  knows  something 
at  least  of  the  vital  difference  between  the  life 
of  ingrained  selfishness,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  life  of  love  and  service  on  the  other.  The 
great  commandment  of  love  was  never  more 
at  home  in  the  thought  of  any  age.  It  feels 
the  appeal  of  Christ's  solemn  word,  "Inas- 
much as  ye  did  it  unto  one  of  these  my 
brethren,  even  these  least,  ye  did  it  unto  me." 
No  modern  man  can  quite  excuse  himself, 
thus,  from  avowedly  choosing  between  the 
essentially  friendly  and  the  essentially  un- 
friendly life.  And  the  essentially  friendly 
life  must  be  the  life  of  universal  good-will 
that  draws  no  lines  of  race  prejudice. 

Prone  in  the  road  he  lay, 
Wounded  and  sore  bested  ; 
Priests,  Levites,  passed  that  way, 
And  turned  aside  the  head. 
They  were  not  hardened  men 
In  human  service  slack : 
His  need  was  great :   but  then 
His  face,  you  see,  was  black. 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL   DECISION      129 

XIII 

Disciple  of  Christ  or  Not 

This  whole  point  of  view  is  so  essentially 
Christ's   that  it  inevitably  suggests  the  pe- 
culiarly Christian   statement  of  the  contrast 
between   lives  —  counting   oneself   a    disciple 
of  Christ  or  not.     Is  there  any  better  or  surer 
way  of  putting  the  vital  test  to  lives  ?     Even 
John  Stuart  Mill  could  say :   "Not  even  now, 
could  it  be  easy,  even  for  an  unbeliever,  to 
find  a  better  translation  of  the  rule  of  virtue 
from  the  abstract  into  the  concrete,  than  to 
endeavor  so  to  live  that  Christ  would  approve 
of  our  life."     This  contrast  between  the  man 
who  counts  himself  first  and  foremost  a  dis- 
ciple of  Christ,  and  him  who  does  not,  will 
include  all  that  is  true  in  the  other  contrasts 
already  considered.     And  as  Mill's  own  word 
would  suggest,  it  makes  the  righteous  life  real 
and  concrete  and  vital  and  personal  and  spirit- 
ual, and  at  the  same  time  gives  to  the  moral 
life  the  religious  basis  of  the  surest  relation 
to  God.     We  know,  in  fact,  no  touchstone  of 
character  so  sure  as  the  spirit  of  Christ's  own 
life.     As  surely  as  the  magnet  draws  the  iron 
filings  out  of  the  sand,  so  surely,  it  seems  to  us, 
does  the  character  of  Christ,  where  it  is  truly 


I30  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

seen,  appeal  to  the  truest  in  character  every- 
where. He  is  the  great  master  of  the  art  of 
life.  The  race  has  no  heritage  so  rich  as  that 
it  has  in  its  priceless  inheritance  from  his  life. 
Here,  as  we  have  already  seen,  in  his  teaching 
and  living  is  the  best  insight  into  the  laws  of 
life.  Here  is  the  highest  in  character.  Here 
are  the  supreme  ideals  and  standards  for  in- 
dividual and  community  and  nation.  Here 
are  the  world's  crowning  moral  convictions 
and  hopes.  Here,  too,  is  the  supreme  dynamic 
for  true  living.  And,  just  because  of  all  this, 
here,  too,  are  the  surest  revelation  of  God, 
and  the  greatest  persuasive  of  the  love  of 
God  —  a  life  able  to  call  out  absolute  trust. 
How  can  a  man  be  dead  in  earnest  to  get  the 
best  insights,  the  best  character,  the  best 
ideals  and  standards,  the  best  convictions 
and  hopes,  the  best  dynamic  and  the  best 
revelation  of  God,  and  not  put  his  life  into  the 
closest  possible  relation  to  the  life  of  this 
master  of  all  life  ^  Is  there  conceivable  any 
better  way  of  making  the  great  life  decision 
for  which  all  our  existence  calls,  any  better 
way  of  seeking  the  largest  life,  any  surer  way 
to  God,  than  by  taking  on  determinedly  and 
avowedly  the  discipleship  of  Christ  ? 

Life's  crucial  questions,  then,  are  insistent, 


LIFE'S  FUNDAMENTAL  DECISION      131 

and  are  such  as  these :  Are  you  to  drift  or 
steer?  Is  there  to  be  for  you  that  dumb 
turning  of  the  will  and  tightening  of  your  heart- 
strings as  you  say  —  ''Yes,  I  will  even  have  It 
so!"  or  Is  all  decision  to  be  lacking?  Are 
moods  to  rule  your  life  or  an  all-pervading 
rational  purpose  ?  Are  you  to  be  fundamen- 
tally loyal  to  your  own  best  vision,  or  disloyal 
with  the  disloyalty  you  yourselves  can  never 
forgive  ?  In  a  scientific  generation  have  you 
given  the  passion  for  the  truth  full  course  with 
you,  or  has  It  seemed  a  small  matter  ?  Have 
you  defeated  for  yourselves  the  perpetual  peril 
of  the  lesser  good,  or  have  you  yielded  to  It  ? 
In  the  depths  of  your  Inner  life  are  you  wilful  or 
obedient  ?  Are  you  following  duty  or  pleas- 
ure ?  Have  you  taken  on  the  will  of  God  as 
the  supreme  law  of  your  life,  or  have  you  re- 
jected it  ?  Have  you  ever  bowed  yourselves, 
like  Dr.  Bushnell,  with  all  your  souls  on  the 
basic  decision  to  do  the  right  as  God  gives 
you  to  see  the  right,  and  let  Its  divine  light  In  on 
your  lives  ?  In  this  age  of  stupendous  material 
resources,  are  your  lives  to  be  dominated  by 
the  dollar  or  emancipated  from  It  ?  Have 
you  committed  yourselves  to  the  unmistak- 
ably friendly  life  or  to  the  unfriendly  life  ? 
Do  you  count  yourselves  first  and  foremost 


132  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

determinedly  and  avowedly  disciples  of  the 
Master  of  Life,  or  has  his  heroic  sifting  call 
found  small  response  in  you  ? 

These,  in  the  experience  of  the  race,  we  may 
well  believe,  are  life's  searching  testing  ques- 
tions. 

And  It  Is  essentially  one  decision  which  a 
man  makes  in  answer  to  them  all,  —  life's 
fundamental  decision.  It  gives  a  new  sense 
of  the  unity  of  all  earnest  living,  to  see  how 
alike  and  how  inevitable  these  decisions  are. 
And  a  man  will  be  helped  in  making  and  carry- 
ing through  his  life's  fundamental  decision 
by  a  better  understanding  of  life's  fundamental 
paradox,  to  which  we  next  turn. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  QUESTION  OF  LIFE'S  FUNDAMENTAL 
PARADOX  —  THE  QUESTION  OF  LIBERTY 
AND  LAW:     THE  LAW  OF  LIBERTY 


The  Fundamental  Nature  of  the  Problem 

We  turn  to  another  fundamental  question, 
both  theoretical  and  practical,  a  perennial 
problem,  a  problem  that  has  occupied  men 
since  they  began  to  ponder  spiritual  issues ; 
a  problem  with  which  great  thinkers  in  phi- 
losophy and  morals  and  religion  have  been 
engaged ;  a  problem  that  still  has  to  do  with 
the  very  essence  of  life  for  every  earnest 
man;  and  a  problem  peculiarly  demanding 
to  be  rethought,  just  now  —  the  problem  of 
liberty  and  law. 

Our  theme  —  The  Law  of  Liberty  —  states 
a  paradox ;  but  it  is  a  paradox  that  men  have 
always  to  solve.  How  can  I  have  liberty 
without  license  ?  How  can  I  enthrone  the 
law  of  righteousness  in  my  life  without  legal- 
ism ?     How  can  I  accept  the  redemption  of 

133 


134  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

religion,  of  divine  grace,  and  still  keep  a 
character  genuinely  my  own  ?  These  are 
questions  both  profound  and  intensely  prac- 
tical. 

How  difficult  men  have  found  the  solution 
of  this  problem,  the  whole  spiritual  history 
of  the  race  bears  witness.  It  is  the  problem 
of  prophet  and  priest  in  Judaism ;  the  prob- 
lem of  faith  and  works  and  antinomianism  in 
the  New  Testament ;  the  problem  of  justifica- 
tion by  faith  in  the  Reformation ;  the  prob- 
lem of  the  Ethics  of  Kant,  with  its  insistence 
on  self-legislation ;  the  problem  of  Nietzsche 
—  to  name  no  other;  the  problem  of  "free 
lovers"  of  all  kinds  and  times;  and,  in  one 
form,  the  problem  of  democracy  itself  —  the 
problem  of  self-government.  It  is  the  great 
life  problem  that  Christ  believed  himself  to 
have  solved. 

We  may  well  take  our  start  from  the  New 
Testament ;  for  all  the  elements  of  the  prob- 
lem are  there  illustrated  :  Judaistic  legalism 
and  antinomianism ;  the  beginnings  of  medie- 
val asceticism  and  mysticism ;  the  anxieties 
of  those  who  have  seen  the  doctrines  of  the 
free  grace  of  God  and  of  salvation  by  faith 
abused ;  the  other  anxieties  of  those  who  see 
Christianity  becoming  only  another  legalism ; 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  PARADOX      135 

and,  soaring  above  all,  the  expression  of  the 
abounding  life  of  free  children  of  the  Heavenly 
Father. 

No  fewer  than  five  books  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment are  directly  and  primarily  occupied 
with  this  theme :  Galatians  and  Romans, 
whose  watchword  is  "For  freedom  did  Christ 
set  us  free ;  stand  fast  therefore,  and  be  not 
entangled  again  in  a  yoke  of  bondage"; 
James,  which  sounds  the  warning,  "Faith,  if 
it  have  not  works,  is  dead  in  itself";  and 
Second  Peter  and  the  curious  little  book  of 
Jude,  that  are  warning  against  a  licentious 
antinomianism. 

The  authors  of  James,  Second  Peter,  and 
Jude  have  seen  the  great  doctrines  of  justifi- 
cation by  faith,  of  salvation  by  grace,  of  the 
free  forgiveness  of  God,  and  of  Christian 
liberty,  made  an  excuse  for  licentious  absence 
of  character,  and  are  calling  men  back  to  the 
insistent  ethical  test  in  religion:  "Be  ye 
doers  of  the  word,  and  not  hearers  only, 
deluding  your  own  selves." 

Paul  in  Galatians  and  Romans  has  seen  all 
freedom  and  joy,  not  only,  but  all  inner 
righteousness,  and  all  grace  and  beauty  of 
character,  so  sapped  by  a  hard  and  haughty 
legalism,   that  he   glories   in   the  deliverance 


136  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

that  Christ  has  brought  from  legal  bondage; 
and  his  great  words  are,  inevitably,  faith,  and 
love,  and  grace,  and  forgiveness,  and  liberty. 
These  were  ideas  too  great  for  his  generation 
rightly  to  grasp,  and  their  abuse  produced  a 
reaction  to  a  new  legalism  that  tainted  Chris- 
tianity for  dreary  years.  But  to  Paul  it  was 
inconceivable  that  faith,  and  love,  and  grace, 
and  forgiveness,  and  liberty  should  mean 
license.  The  trust  and  the  love  called  out  by 
the  matchless  gracious  personal  revelation  of 
God  in  Christ  stirred  new  powers  in  him,  and 
held  him  to  a  grateful  and  quenchless  am- 
bition for  such  a  life  as  Christ's,  and  brought 
him  victory  where  before  he  had  failed.  The 
free  grace  and  forgiveness  of  a  holy  God,  such 
as  Christ's  life  portrayed,  could  but  mean 
that  God  was  pledged  to  cooperate  with  him 
in  the  attainment  of  a  life  worthy  of  a  child 
of  God.  Like  Christ,  he  himself  found  his 
highest  liberty  in  devotion  to  his  Father's 
will.  No  man,  he  was  sure,  could  really  be 
drawn  to  Christ  and  not  become  like  him  — 
not  by  painful  legal  performances,  but  by 
the  healthful  contagion  of  Christ's  own  spirit. 
Paul  had  caught,  thus,  a  new  vision  of 
God's  purpose  concerning  men.  He  had 
come  to  see  that  men  were  not  made  to  be 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL   PARADOX      137 

petty  egoists,  shut  up  within  the  narrow  walls 
of  their  own  separate  selves,  but  that  they 
were  created  on  so  large  a  plan  that  they 
could  not  come  to  their  best  independently 
either  of  one  another  or  of  God,  —  that  they 
were  made  in  every  fiber  of  their  beings  for 
such  fellowships.  To  hold  back  from  these 
fellowships  was  to  insure  defeat.  It  was  an 
utterly  false  and  mistaken  pride,  therefore, 
that  in  one's  struggle  for  character  shut  the 
door  on  other  lives,  human  and  divine,  which 
were  really  part  and  parcel  of  one's  self. 

II 

Why  this  Problem  Constantly  Recurs 

Let  us  stop  a  moment  to  make  plain  how 
absolutely  essential  both  freedom  and  char- 
acter, both  law  and  liberty,  are,  and  how  vital 
to  all  satisfying  life  is  the  inner  meaning  of 
both  contentions. 

What,  in  the  first  place,  is  law  at  bottom 
—  all  law  that  ultimately  a  man  ought  to 
obey  ?  It  is  intended,  evidently,  to  secure  a 
society  united  in  the  pursuit  of  certain  great 
common  goods  ;  it  is  a  way  of  life ;  —  a  way 
that  the  experience  of  the  race  indicates  that 
it   is   desirable  for  the   common  good  of  all 


138  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

that  all  men  follow ;  a  way  so  good  that  it  is 
felt  to  be  embodied  in  our  natures  as  the  will 
of  our  Creator  for  us,  and  therefore  a  way  of 
life. 

When  human  law  or  custom  becomes  some- 
thing else ;  when  it  serves  no  common  good ; 
when  it  will  not  bear  the  test  of  racial  experi- 
ence ;  when  we  cannot  believe  it  represents  a 
true  ought  or  a  true  interpretation  of  the 
will  of  God,  it  thereby  loses  all  authority  as 
law,  and  the  ethical  law  in  the  true  sense 
abrogates  the  law  falsely  so  called.  Not  all 
revolt  against  existing  law,  therefore,  is  law- 
lessness. Many  a  smug  but  dire  injustice  is 
hidden  under  law. 

The  insistent  and  eternal  demand  for  char- 
acter is  the  demand  for  obedience  to  a  law 
that  can  be  conceived  to  be  the  will  of  an  all- 
loving  God.  Now  to  try  to  get  away  from 
that  law  is  to  flee  from  life,  for  it  is  an  attempt 
to  get  away  from  one's  own  highest  ideal. 
That  is  not  to  come  into  larger  life,  but  ulti- 
mately to  take  all  self-respect  and  dignity  and 
worth  out  of  living.  The  demand  for  liberty 
too  frequently  forgets  that  some  sphere  of 
order  and  law  is  essential  to  give  freedom 
itself  any  value,  and  so  it  turns  its  revolt 
against  a  law  into  a  revolt  against  law  itself; 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  PARADOX     139 

its  revolt  against  a  particular  form  of  order 
into  a  revolt  against  all  order.  There  is  a 
widespread  menacing  tendency  in  all  spheres 
of  our  modern  life  —  the  tendency  to  forget 
that  self-control  is  a  prime  condition  of  every- 
thing worth  while  in  life.  "Letting  oneself 
go"  is  a  good  road  to  nothing  except  insanity. 
There  is  much  talk  of  so-called  "personal 
liberty,"  that  really  means  liberty  to  debauch 
the  community,  liberty  to  make  conditions 
far  harder  for  both  personal  and  social 
progress. 

But  the  very  fact  that  conceptions  of  law 
can  so  change ;  that  imperfect,  developing 
men  can  at  one  stage  find  the  preservation  of 
a  common  good  in  a  law  that  later  seems  to 
them  a  hindrance  to  growth  and  to  larger  life, 
itself  illustrates  and  justifies  the  perennial 
demand  for  liberty.  Conditions  change. 
Men  develop.  New  ideals  arise.  Readjust- 
ment is  imperative.  What  adjustment,  is 
always  the  question. 

All  men  agree  that  in  seeking  to  attain  a 
common  good  there  must  be  no  unnecessary 
interference  with  the  freedom  of  the  individual. 
Institutions,  the  state,  the  law  itself,  all  ulti- 
mately exist  for  the  greater  good  of  individual 
citizens.     Too    heavy    a    price    in    individual 


I40  FUNDAMENTAL   QUESTIONS 

freedom  may  easily  be  paid  for  a  well-recog- 
nized common  good. 

But  the  justification  of  the  demand  for 
liberty  lies  much  deeper  than  this.  The  one 
thing  that  the  individual  has  to  give  to  the 
common  good  is  himself,  his  fully  realized 
possibilities.  But  this  complete  self-realiza- 
tion is  also  his  own  individual  highest  good. 
From  both  points  of  view,  therefore,  there  is 
required  the  freedom  for  the  individual  to 
develop  his  largest  possibilities,  and  this  re- 
quires something  more  than  selfish  self-will. 
And  law  —  the  expressed  will  of  the  whole 
community  —  must  often  come  in,  not  to 
hinder,  but  to  preserve  this  freedom  of  the 
individual,  his  full  initiative  —  to  protect  the 
individual  against  the  unwarranted  aggres- 
sions of  others.  The  community  suffers  wher- 
ever any  individual  citizen  has  not  the  liberty 
to  make  his  full  contribution  to  the  common 
life.  From  this  angle  it  is  hardly  too  much 
to  say  that  law  itself  exists  to  insure  the 
highest  and  largest  liberty  to  the  individual. 

But  the  demand  for  liberty  has  a  still  deeper 
source.  A  man  is  not  truly  a  man  unless  he 
has  an  inner  life  of  his  own ;  freedom  of 
thought,  freedom  of  investigation,  freedom 
to  be  himself  in  his  inmost  life.     Character 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  PARADOX     141 

cannot  be  laid  upon  him  from  without.  He 
must  see  for  himself  and  choose  for  himself. 
A  fundamentally  good  society,  therefore,  is 
not  a  society  in  which  every  wrong  act  is 
forbidden  by  law  and  prevented  by  an  omnis- 
cient and  omnipotent  police  force,  but  a 
society  in  which  men  choose  for  themselves 
obedience  to  the  highest  ideals  they  have  seen. 
But  this  requires  liberty  at  every  step,  as  well 
as  the  developing  power  of  law.  The  great 
aim  of  human  life  and  society  is  to  develop 
free  men  who  choose  the  right,  not  to  get  a 
certain  sort  of  external  conduct.  God,  him- 
self, counts  this  free  choice  of  the  right  so 
infinite  in  value  as  to  be  worth  the  terrible 
price  of  all  the  sin  and  suffering  which  the 
abuse  of  men's  freedom  has  brought  into  the 
world.  He  has  given  men  no  play  freedom, 
but  a  freedom  terribly  real.  And  human 
society  in  all  its  lawmaking  may  never  forget 
the  eternal  need  of  freedom. 

In  the  solution  of  this  constant  paradox  of 
liberty  and  law,  men  must  therefore  learn 
patience  with  men ;  patience  with  the 
blunderers  of  the  race ;  patience  with  its 
born  legislators  ;  patience  with  its  born  rebels  ; 
patience  with  its  common  men  fighting  their 
way  slowly  to  character;    patience  with  its 


142  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

genuises  and  prophets,  with  their  new  and 
sudden  visions ;  for  both  law  and  liberty 
must  be  kept,  both  character  and  freedom. 

The  constant  recurrence  of  the  problem  of 
liberty  and  law  will  be  understood  also  when 
we  see  that  this  problem  is  at  bottom  the 
problem  of  the  radical  and  the  conservative, 
and  the  problem  of  "absolute  natural  right," 
on  the  one  hand,  and  of  ''historic  legitimate 
right,"  on  the  other ;  the  problem  of  justice 
to  the  past  and  of  justice  to  the  present  and 
future.  And  all  are  represented  at  any  time 
in  society  by  the  members  of  three  genera- 
tions. But  just  as  a  sphere  of  law  is  neces- 
sary to  give  meaning  to  freedom,  and  just  as 
the  preservation  of  freedom  of  initiative  must 
be  the  very  aim  of  law;  so  the  radical  and 
conservative  at  bottom  have  similar  goals. 
The  radical  does  not  wish  to  root  up  all  the 
past,  but  only  the  evil  and  the  ineffective  for 
good  as  he  conceives  it;  but  he  recognizes 
that  in  thus  rooting  up  the  faulty  he  is  cer- 
tain to  sacrifice  much  else.  The  conservative 
does  not  wish  to  preserve  all  the  past,  but 
only  all  the  good  of  the  past;  but  he  recog- 
nizes that  in  preserving  all  of  the  good  he  is 
certain  to  keep,  in  the  structure  of  society, 
much  evil  also.     Each  believes  he  preserves 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  PARADOX      143 

a  balance  of  good  by  his  method;  and  this 
balance  of  good  is  the  real  aim  in  both  cases. 

Like  the  differences  between  the  advocates 
of  law  and  liberty,  the  differences  between 
the  radical  and  the  conservative  are  to  a  large 
extent  temperamental.  They  go  back  finally, 
probably,  to  the  fundamental  paradox  of  the 
inner  life  —  docility  and  initiative,  self-sur- 
render and  self-assertion.  Character  in  the 
large  sense,  as  I  have  elsewhere  said,  "re- 
quires both  self-assertion  and  self-surrender, 
both  individuality  and  deference,  both  the 
assertion  of  a  law  for  oneself  and  the  reason- 
able yielding  to  others,  both  loyalty  to  con- 
viction and  open-mindedness,  both  free  inde- 
pendence and  obedience." 

And  for  all  social  progress,  in  like  manner, 
both  temperaments  represent  indispensable 
human  needs.  For  any  solid  and  enduring 
social  progress  there  must  be  historical  con- 
tinuity, on  the  one  hand,  and  constant  read- 
justment on  the  other.  We  do  not  live  in  a 
static  world ;  we  are  not  static  beings.  We 
are  always  in  process.  A  blind  conservatism 
and  a  blind  radicalism  are  both  therefore  im- 
possible. To  keep  even  the  good  of  the  past 
in  new  conditions  requires  adjustment.  To 
get  rid  of  even  the  most  certain  evils  of  the 


144  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

past  requires  that  the  new  method  or  custom 
shall  be  fitted  into  what  men  have  already 
attained.  Free  spontaneity  in  obedience  to 
constantly  bettering  ideals,  —  this  must  be 
the  goal  of  both  radical  and  conservative ;  of 
defenders  both  of  liberty  and  of  law. 

Ill 

The  New  Testament  Solution  of  the 
Problem 

Have  we  modern  men  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury any  better  solution  ^  All  five  of  those 
New  Testament  books,  which  are  occupied 
with  the  problem  of  law  and  liberty,  seek  to 
show  how  one  may  attain  character  and  avoid 
legalism ;  how  he  may  keep  freedom  of  life 
and  be  true  to  the  highest  standards.  They 
aim  to  point  the  way  to  definite  growth  in 
character,  as  necessarily  involved  in  the  very 
idea  of  the  Christian  life.  Can  we  penetrate 
their  solution  ? 

Our  theme  suggests  the  lines  on  which  this 
paradox  of  the  moral  and  religious  life  may 
be  solved.  The  passage  in  James  that  con- 
tains the  theme  runs,  you  will  remember,  in 
this  fashion  :  ''But  be  ye  doers  of  the  word, 
and  not  hearers  only,  deluding  your  own  selves. 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  PARADOX      145 

For  if  anyone  is  a  hearer  of  the  word  and  not 
a  doer,  he  is  like  unto  a  man  beholding  his 
natural  face  in  a  mirror  :  for  he  beholdeth 
himself,  and  goeth  away,  and  straightway 
forgetteth  what  manner  of  man  he  was.  But 
he  that  looketh  into  the  perfect  law,  the  law 
of  liberty,  and  so  continueth,  being  not  a 
hearer  that  forgetteth  but  a  doer  that  worketh, 
this  man  shall  be  blessed  in  his  doing" 
(James  i  :  22-25).  Here,  plainly,  there  has 
come  to  the  writer  an  illuminating  insight 
into  the  meaning  of  any  true  law  of  God.  It 
is  a  law  of  a  man's  own  being,  a  revealing  to 
him  of  the  lines  along  which  life  lies.  The 
perfect  law  is  a  law  of  liberty,  because  it  is 
the  law  of  one's  own  being  truly  discerned 
and  stated.  In  obeying  this  inner  law  of  his 
own  nature  one  has  liberty,  the  only  true 
liberty,  and  is  "blessed"  thereby.  Such  a  law 
simply  states  the  true  self  which  we  are  to 
realize.  We  can  have  freedom  only  in  de- 
veloping toward  the  goal  involved  in  our  in- 
most natures.  Here  is  freedom  to  follow  the 
most  fundamental  trends  of  our  natures,  and 
here,  too,  is  the  character  that  grows  out  of 
fulfilled  ideals.  The  conception  is  identical 
with  the  new  conception  which  modern  science 
suggests  of  the  laws  of   nature,  as  not  hin- 


146  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

drances  to  life  but  as  ways  to  conquest  and 
larger  life. 

James  here  starts  from  the  side  of  law,  but 
Paul,  starting  from  the  side  of  the  inner  free- 
dom, reaches  essentially  the  same  conclusion. 
''For  in  Christ  Jesus,"  he  says,  "neither  cir- 
cumcision availeth  anything,  nor  uncircum- 
cision ;  but  faith  working  through  love." 
"For  ye,  brethren,  were  called  for  freedom; 
only  use  not  your  freedom  for  an  occasion  to 
the  flesh,  but  through  love  be  servants  one  to 
another.  For  the  whole  law  is  fulfilled  in  one 
word,  even  in  this  :  thou  shalt  love  thy  neigh- 
bor as  thyself."  Paul,  too,  shows  that  he 
has  had  a  flash  of  illumination  lighting  up 
the  whole  paradox  of  law  and  liberty  to  its 
depths.  No  external  law,  he  insists,  can  set 
free  the  inner  man.  But  the  great  revelation 
of  God  in  Christ  can  call  out  supreme  trust 
and  love,  can  appeal  at  once  to  the  inmost  in 
man.  Only  a  great  trust  can  thus  profoundly 
call  us  out,  we  getting  such  a  vision  of  the 
fatherly  will  of  God  in  Christ  that  we  can 
but  trust  him,  and  God  so  trusting  us  that 
we  cannot  be  unworthy  of  that  trust.  Such 
a  trust  or  faith  is  bound  to  "work";  it  will 
"  out "  ;  it  cannot  help  expressing  itself  in  a 
reflection  of  the  great  personality  that  has 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  PARADOX      147 

aroused  it  to  such  trust  and  love;  —  "faith 
working  through  love,"  inevitably  expressing 
Its  love  to  God  in  a  sharing  in  his  life  of  self- 
giving  love  for  men.  Such  a  love  has  the 
very  essence  of  all  true  law  in  itself.  It  ful- 
fills all  law.  Such  a  faith,  just  because  it 
springs  from  within  and  works  through  love, 
will  be  free  and  spontaneous,  all  its  outer  con- 
duct prompted  by  an  inner  spirit.  Liberty 
here  insures  law. 

How  surely  this  must  follow  on  any  true 
conception  of  Christianity;  how  surely  the 
grace  of  God  in  Christ  carries  one  on  to  a  life 
like  God's  own;  how  surely  the  freedom  of 
religion  insures  an  ethical  life,  can  be  very 
briefly  put  from  various  angles. 

In  the  first  place,  the  Christian  is  a  learner 
of  Christ,  and  hence  of  course  makes  the  ideal 
of  Christ's  life  that  of  his  own. 

Or,  the  religious  man  seeks  above  all,  in 
the  very  passion  of  his  religious  desire,  to 
share  in  the  life  of  God  himself,  and  the  God 
whom  Christ  reveals  is  in  his  very  essence 
self-giving  love.  One  cannot  share  that  life 
and  not  give  himself  in  loving  service  to  men. 

Naturally,  therefore,  and  again,  the  New 
Testament  came  to  conceive  of  a  truly  ethical 
life   as   the   inevitable   fruit   of   the   religious 


148  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

acceptance  of  Christ.  Or,  as  James  puts  it, 
the  inner  spirit  is  conceived  as  a  fountain 
out  of  which  all  external  expression  comes. 

Or,  through  a  deeper  conception  of  law,  as 
we  have  seen,  God's  law  is  felt  to  be  only  a 
loving  hint  of  the  line  of  life  for  us ;  the 
ethical  command  itself,  therefore,  becoming 
a  revelation  of  the  love  of  God,  so  that  we 
see  that  in  obeying  the  ethical  command  we 
are  simply  following  the  laws  of  life  into  a 
steadily  enlarging  life. 

IV 

The  Relation  of  the  Christian  Solution 
OF  THE  Paradox  to  Other  Theories 
of  Life 

This  conception  is  so  true  to  Christ's  own 
thought  of  the  will  of  God  as  a  Father's  will, 
as  well  as  to  that  of  James  and  Paul,  and  to 
that  of  the  scientific  conception  of  law,  that 
we  shall  do  well  to  try  to  think  it  through  a 
little  further,  and  see  its  relation  to  other 
theories  of  life. 

A  large  part  of  the  appeal  of  selfish  pleas- 
ure, for  example,  lies  in  its  seeming  promise 
of  larger  liberty,  of  further  life.  "I  want  to 
do  as  I  like ;"    ''I  want  to  see  life,"  the  pleas- 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  PARADOX     149 

ure-seeker  urges.  "Live  while  you  live,"  he 
exhorts.  And  even  the  lowest  selfish  sense 
pleasures  doaiford  some  emotional  experiences, 
that  give  temporarily  a  new  sense  of  freedom 
and  elation  and  interest,  and  so  some  seem- 
ing immediate  extension  of  life.  Now  men 
have  a  right  to  expect  from  life  freedom  and 
interest  and  enlargement.  And  this  natural 
cry  of  the  pleasure-seeker  shows  that  con- 
tenders for  the  ideal  may  not  lightly  surrender 
Christ's  idea  of  religion  as  giving  abundant 
life,  but  must  steadily  insist  on  a  conception 
of  goodness  that  can  be  permanently  interest- 
ing. One  cannot  hope  to  succeed  in  con- 
stantly whipping  his  soul  back  from  all  that 
he  counts  of  interest  and  of  real  value.  Men 
need  at  this  point  constant  enlightenment. 
No  virtue  is  safe  that  is  not  both  intelligent 
and  militant. 

And  the  clear-sighted  man  has  now  come 
to  see  that  to  think  of  moral  laws  as  hin- 
drances to  liberty  and  life  is  a  great  mistake. 
He  now  conceives  them  rather  as  formulating 
the  outcome  of  the  experience  of  the  race. 
They  state,  that  is,  the  ways  in  which  we  can 
best  satisfy  the  whole  man,  the  ways  in 
which  we  get  the  most  out  of  these  natures 
of  ours,  the  ways  in  which  our  beings  were 


I50  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

meant  to  act.  To  refuse  to  obey  such  laws 
written  in  our  constitutions  is  as  absurd  as  it 
would  be  to  refuse  to  obey  the  directions  of 
the  manufacturer  for  the  running  of  a  superb 
automobile.  The  directions  are  not  to  hamper 
us,  but  to  enable  us  to  get  the  utmost  out  of 
our  machine.  Only  a  fool  would  ignore  them 
and  pride  himself  meanwhile  on  his  liberty. 
In  fact,  one  gets  no  real  liberty  in  the  use  of  a 
machine  until  its  laws  have  become  like  inner 
laws  for  him,  and  it  is  second  nature  and  auto- 
matic for  him  to  obey  them.  It  is  exactly  so 
concerning  the  laws  of  our  bodies  and  minds. 
If  we  ignore  the  fact  that  we  are  made  for 
action,  for  heroic  achievement,  for  fine  per- 
sonal relations,  we  shall  thereby  gain  neither 
freedom  nor  larger  life,  but  make,  rather,  the 
largest  life  impossible  to  us.  When  men  so 
act,  they  are  turning  back  to  lower  and  cor- 
rupt ends,  to  ends  abandoned  in  the  upreach- 
ing  of  the  race. 

Indeed,  religion  itself  is  probably  rightly 
conceived  as  growing  out  of  men's  constantly 
extending  claim  on  life,  men's  persistent  re- 
fusal to  be  satisfied  with  the  finite.  "Noth- 
ing," says  Johanna  Ambrosius,  "is  so  insa- 
tiable as  the  human  heart.  If  it  has  enough 
to  eat  and  drink,  it  longs  for  costly  vessels  for 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  PARADOX      151 

the  food  to  be  served  in,  and  once  it  possesses 
these  it  would  ask  for  the  blue  heavens  as  a 
tablecloth."  Men  have  unquenchable  thirsts 
for  extending  experience,  for  permanent  out- 
looks and  hopes,  for  constantly  enlarging 
life,  in  a  word,  for  love ;  —  thirsts  that  God 
alone  can  satisfy.  The  highest  law  and  the 
largest  liberty  here  again  come  together. 
The  constant  seeming  antinomy  between 
pleasure  and  duty,  between  the  religious  and 
the  irreligious  life,  and  the  frequent  feeling 
that  duty  and  religion  limit  rather  than  en- 
large life,  are,  consequently,  usually  due  to 
false  conceptions  both  of  happiness  and  of 
religion. 

On  the  one  hand,  the  pleasure-seeker  is 
usually  thinking  of  an  immediate  and  partial 
and  selfish  satisfaction;  forgetting  the  "long 
run,"  forgetting  the  whole  personality,  and 
forgetting  all  others.  And  the  fleeting,  un- 
satisfying nature  of  much  that  is  called  pleas- 
ure, and  sought  as  such,  is  so  explained. 
"Man  shall  not  live  by  bread  alone."  In 
the  first  place,  he  is  a  creature  of  memory 
and  anticipation;  he  cannot  live  simply  in 
the  immediate  pleasure  of  the  passing  moment. 
In  the  second  place,  he  is  a  creature  not  of 
appetites  only,  but  of  imagination,  and  reason 


152  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

and  conscience;  he  has  his  whole  nature 
always  to  reckon  with.  In  the  third  place, 
his  life  is  knit  up  indissolubly  with  other  lives  ; 
they  are  part  and  parcel  of  himself.  He  is  so 
made.  He  cannot,  therefore,  think  simply  of 
himself  and  have  largeness  of  life.  In  all 
these  ways  a  false  conception  of  happiness 
misleads.  The  deceptive  nature  of  alcohol, 
as  shown  under  the  cold  analysis  of  scientific 
experiment,  precisely  illustrates  the  misleading 
nature  of  the  appeal  of  the  immediate  and 
partial  and  selfish  pleasure. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  claim  of  the  moral 
and  religious  life  may  also  be  misconceived. 
Sometimes,  with  a  false  asceticism,  it  is  made 
to  deny  the  body's  legitimate  place.  Some- 
times its  goodness  is  conceived  only  nega- 
tively and  legalistically,  and  so  robbed  of 
interest  and  spontaneity,  as  a  mere  emptying 
of  life,  or  a  hard,  disagreeable,  and  useless 
task  arbitrarily  imposed.  But  such  a  con- 
ception has  nothing  to  do  with  Christ's 
thought  of  a  steadily  advancing,  intelligent, 
and  unselfish  entrance  into  the  loving  will  of 
God  for  all  men.  That  carries  with  it  all 
great  causes,  all  high  ideals,  all  inspiring 
devotions  and  enthusiasms,  and  alone  holds 
the  promise  of  a  permanently  satisfying  life. 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  PARADOX     153 

V 

Modern  Examples  of  the  Paradox 

How  urgently  our  own  time  is  demanding 
that  we  rethink  this  whole  problem  of  liberty 
and  law,  violently  opposed  tendencies  show. 

On  the  one  hand  there  is  the  host  of  re- 
formers who  are  seeking  to  write  into  law 
all  kinds  of  imaginable  human  gains,  for- 
getting too  often  the  imperative  necessity,  if 
civilization  is  really  to  advance,  that  men  be 
brought  to  an  inner  choice  of  all  real  goods. 
For  it  is  well  to  remember,  as  President  Had- 
ley  puts  it,  that  "it  is  easier  to  pass  a  radical 
measure  that  is  going  to  be  evaded  than  to 
secure  obedience  to  a  conservative  one." 
All  of  us  need  to  take  deeply  to  heart  that 
advanced  legislation  is  in  itself  no  proof  of 
progress,  if  there  do  not  accompany  it  willing- 
ness to  obey  the  law  that  expresses  the  higher 
ideal.  We  are  not  to  forget  that  democracy 
is  no  mere  matter  of  form  of  government  or 
kinds  of  legislation ;  but  that  democracy  goes 
forward  in  just  the  proportion  in  which  self- 
discipline  accompanies  it,  as  Dr.  Jacks  so 
incisively  reminds  us : 

The  central  problem  of  democracy  is  the  problem 
of  educating  the  citizen.     This,  indeed,  is  a  common- 


154  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

place ;  but  there  is  reason  to  think  that  the  kind  of 
education  required  by  the  citizen,  whether  as  subject 
or  legislator,  to  qualify  him  for  the  new  part  he  has  to 
play,  has  not  been  sufficiently  considered.  What  he 
needs  is  not  merely  instruction  in  political  science. 
He  does  need  that;  but  he  needs  something  else  far 
more  ;  something  without  which  all  the  political  science 
in  the  world  will  carry  him  but  a  little  way.  He  must 
learn  to  obey :  and  the  lesson  will  be  all  the  more  diffi- 
cult for  him  to  learn  because  hitherto  democracy  has 
been  too  closely  associated  with  the  spirit  which  prompts 
him  to  seek  escape  from  authority.  Of  all  modern 
democratic  governments,  with  scarcely  one  exception, 
it  may  be  said  that  they  were  conceived  in  disobedience 
and  born  in  rebellion.  Their  watchword  has  ever  been 
"liberty";  but  "liberty"  interpreted  in  a  sense  which 
has  obscured  its  sterner  implications.  But  now  that 
democracy  has  taken  up  the  task  of  social  reform  those 
sterner  implications  are  coming  into  view.  None  but 
a  thoroughly  disciplined  community  can  effectually 
deal,  through  its  Government,  with  social  reform. 
The  idea,  too  prevalent  in  certain  quarters,  that  the 
restraints  of  social  reform  will  fall  exclusively  on  the 
rich,  the  idle,  the  privileged,  is  a  fond  illusion.  Every 
man  of  us  will  be  put  under  restraints  such  as  we  have 
never  dreamed  of;  such  as  few  men  have  ever  asked 
themselves  whether  they  were  willing,  or  even  able,  to 
bear.  It  is  well  that  we  should  all  realize  this  truth  — 
for  it  is  irrefutable  —  as  we  listen  to  the  daring 
programmes  and  the  glowing  promises  of  political 
orators. 

We  must  learn  to  obey.     We  must  gird  our- 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  PARADOX     155 

selves  for  that  increasing  self-discipline  that 
is  demanded  by  advancing  social  aims. 

As  opposed  to  these  who  are  seeking  to 
write  all  reform  into  law,  and  are  satisfied 
therewith,  stand  the  violent  emancipators  of 
various  classes,  like  the  syndicalists  and  the 
militant  suffragettes,  who  imagine  that  force 
of  itself  can  bring  emancipation  to  their  re- 
spective classes.  Let  it  be  perfectly  clear 
here  that  there  is  much  of  injustice  to  protest 
against.  It  cannot  be  justly  claimed  that 
women  have  a  fair  representation  in  organized 
society  to-day.  It  cannot  be  justly  claimed 
that  industrial  workers  in  general  are  fairly 
sharing  in  the  joint  product  of  labor  and  capi- 
tal. The  shameless  record  of  the  mining  cor- 
porations of  Colorado,  in  the  debauching  of 
all  the  forces  of  law  and  justice,  is  but  one 
piece  of  evidence.  How  certainly  the  selfish 
lawlessness  of  the  capitalistic  class  fruits 
either  in  the  selfish  lawlessness  of  other  classes, 
or  in  the  determination  to  bring  all  business 
under  state  control,  was  witnessed  some  time 
ago  by  the  conservative  Railway  Age-Gazette, 
commenting  on  current  phenomena  before  the 
reorganization  of  the  New  Haven  road  :  "The 
real  leaders  of  Socialism  in  this  country  are 
such  men  as  Charles  S.  Mellen,  B.  F.  Yoakum, 


156  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

and  the  directors  of  the  New  Haven,  Frisco, 
and  other  roads  who  are  too  crooked,  cowardly, 
indolent,  or  incapable  to  perform  the  duties  of 
their  positions." 

Nevertheless,  selfish  force  cannot  bring  the 
emancipation  of  any  class.  Not  even  if  they 
could  be  certainly  successful  in  the  use  of 
force,  could  the  emancipation  so  come.  We 
are  learning  that  the  unspeakable  folly  of  war 
is  that  it  settles  nothing ;  that  after  all  the 
fighting  is  over,  the  real  solution  must  be 
reached  in  other  more  rational  ways.  Let 
the  Balkan  wars  bear  witness :  intolerable 
slaughter  and  suicide  of  nations,  and  abso- 
lutely nothing  of  value  accomplished  !  The 
greater  European  War  seems  likely  to  give  a 
like  demonstration.  Any  cause  is  safe  in  just 
the  degree  in  which  it  has  really  won  the  con- 
viction of  men.  The  real  victory  of  a  cause, 
therefore,  absolutely  requires  education,  per- 
suasion, and  the  free  choosing  of  the  new 
goal.  The  forced  victory,  even  if  possible, 
thus,  is  a  cheap  and  insecure  victory ;  the 
more  fundamental  and  difiicult  task  still  re- 
mains. A  selfish,  lawless  class  victory,  that 
willingly  ignores  all  other  human  interests, 
just  because  it  is  selfish  and  lawless,  cannot 
abide.     "Nothing  is  settled  until  it  is  settled 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  PARADOX     157 

right,"  is  still  good  doctrine,  and  more  clear 
now  than  ever.  These  causes  of  the  syndi- 
calist and  of  the  militant  suffragette  com- 
plain, not  without  justification,  as  we  have 
seen,  that  society  is  not  doing  them  justice. 
But  will  treacherous  use  of  force  remedy  that  ^ 
Can  men  counsel  and  practice  treachery  and 
violence  and  spread  this  disease  through 
society,  and  reap  the  fruit  of  loyalty  and  fair 
dealing,  and  not  rather  make  society  itself 
impossible  ?  Syndicalism  is  seeking  to  remedy 
the  selfish  lawlessness  of  the  capitalistic  class 
by  a  like  selfish  lawlessness  on  the  part  of  the 
working  class.  It  is  the  old  fallacy  of  lynch 
law.  Outrage  of  humanity  cannot  be  cured 
by  further  outrage.  Militant  suffragism  is 
seeking  to  win  long  delayed  justice  in  giving 
women  a  fair  share  in  government,  by  a  selfish 
lawlessness  that  would  set  all  government  at 
naught.  It  has  not  observed  even  the  decen- 
cies of  civilized  warfare.  It  is  using  mob 
violence  and  it  is  increasingly  provoking  mob 
violence.  Democracy,  we  may  not  forget, 
means  not  only  ^^//-government  but  self- 
government.  Those  who  are  to  share  in  that 
may  not  appeal  to  the  mob.  Nothing  is  so 
terrible  in  human  society  as  fundamental 
lawlessness,  and  it  was,  therefore,  that  Kant, 


158  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

who  was  no  believer  in  character  laid  on  from 
without,  still  felt  compelled  to  say:  "If  law 
ceases,  all  worth  of  human  life  on  earth 
ceases  too."  Set  your  face  like  a  flint  against 
selfish  lawlessness  for  any  cause. 

And  it  is  in  this  same  direction  that  we  are 
to  look  for  the  fallacy  of  "free  lovers"  of  all 
sorts,  who  find  in  the  strength  of  uncontrolled 
passion  its  own  excuse  for  being.  Their  doc- 
trine is  having,  just  now,  a  strange  recru- 
descence, and  they  would  fain  persuade  men 
that  the  race  has,  so  far,  learned  nothing  con- 
cerning the  relations  of  the  sexes.  That  there 
are  many  diflicult  questions  here;  that  our 
conventions  have  not  all  been  justified ;  that 
there  have  been  some  strong  moral  grounds 
for  the  extension  of  divorce;  that  much  that 
has  been  written  of  a  revolutionary  character 
has  been  written  in  moral  earnestness ;  that 
some  relations  classed  legitimate  are  really 
less  justified,  in  the  sight  of  God,  than  some 
counted  illegitimate  —  all  this  need  not  be 
questioned. 

But,  on  the  one  hand,  where  a  real  ideal 
has  been  seriously  set  up,  as  by  Mrs.  Key, 
for  example,  it  is  an  ideal  much  more  tenuous 
and  more  difficult  of  realization  both  by  the 
individual    and    by    society,    and    hence    less 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL   PARADOX      159 

practicable,  and  it  is  fraught  with  many- 
dubious  consequences  that  make  the  ideal 
itself  exceedingly  doubtful.  It  is  very  diffi- 
cult to  believe  that  such  theories  do  justice 
either  to  the  sober  lessons  of  evolution,  or  to 
the  experience  of  the  race  in  marriage.  When 
one  prominent  Feminist  can  say,  —  ''Per- 
sonally I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  the  ulti- 
mate aim  of  Feminism  with  regard  to  mar- 
riage is  the  practical  suppression  of  marriage 
and  the  institution  of  free  alliance,"  —  one 
cannot  help  feeling  that  there  is  here  disclosed 
a  bland  indifference  both  to  experience  and 
to  one  whole  side  of  the  paradox  of  liberty  and 
law.  The  race  will  wisely  go  slow  in  giving 
to  wild  speculation  so  great  weight  in  the 
most  important  moral  questions.  Marriage 
will  fail,  just  as  any  other  institution  will  fail, 
when  men  bring  to  it  only  selfish  passion. 
That  is  a  failure,  in  truth,  however,  not  of  an 
institution,  but  of  men. 

But  for  the  most  part,  these  free  lovers  are 
not  truly  concerned  with  great  moral  ideals 
at  all.  They  are  thinking  of  selfish  pleasure, 
and  chafe  under  any  permanent  obligations. 
They  simply  are  not  willing  to  pay  their  part 
of  the  price  of  a  decent  civilization.  And 
they    are   pointing    to    the  old,   easy,   often- 


i6o  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

traveled  road  of  selfish  indulgence,  allowing 
to  impulse  supreme  control,  whatever  this 
may  cost  some  one  else.  It  would  be  pathetic, 
if  it  were  not  so  shameful  and  so  self-contra- 
dictory, to  see  how  these  landers  of  passion 
persuade  themselves  with  each  new  relation 
that  here  is  a  real  affinity,  here  one  may  find 
ideals  realized,  here  vow  eternal  fealty,  such 
as  they  have  just  belied  in  utter  treachery  in 
another  relation.  The  very  fact  that  they 
cannot  get  away  from  such  idealizing  shows 
how  surely  any  love  that  is  to  be  at  all  satis- 
fying even  to  a  selfish  soul,  must  be  thought 
of  as  having  abiding  loyalty.  And  so  long 
as  cause  and  effect  exist  in  the  moral  world, 
treachery,  we  may  be  sure,  cannot  yield  the 
fruits  of  loyalty;  and  fine  human  relations 
cannot  be  built  up  out  of  a  series  of  infideli- 
ties. Hateful,  mean,  selfish  treachery  —  that 
is  what  these  free  lovers  are  trying  to  gild. 
The  truth  is,  that  such  lives  surrender  the 
helm  of  will  to  feeling,  and  give  up  in  these 
relations  moral  values  altogether.  And  this 
is  finally  to  prove  traitors  to  the  race's  task 
of  an  even  tolerable  civilization. 

The  careless  indifference,  too,  with  which 
entire  classes  of  society,  in  their  devotion  to 
the  pleasure  of  *'week  ends,"  are  willing  to 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  PARADOX     i6i 

jeopardize  the  whole  great  institution  of  the 
Sabbath,  is  simply  another  illustration  of 
selfish  lawlessness.  One  needs  to  be  no  ascetic 
to  see  that  the  conversion  of  our  Sundays  into 
simple  pleasure  seeking,  however  innocent  in 
itself,  is  an  immense  loss  to  all  the  deeper 
forces  that  go  to  the  making  of  any  ciliviza- 
tion  deserving  the  name.  Educated  men  and 
women,  at  least,  may  be  asked  to  do  thinking 
enough  not  heedlessly  to  barter  one  of  the 
great  spiritual  achievements  of  the  race  for  a 
couple  of  days  of  house  parties  and  auto 
riding  and  golf.  Are  we  going  to  lose  all 
sense  of  proportionate  values  ? 

The  weekly  harvest  of  death  through  auto 
speeding,  the  like  perpetual  sacrifice  of  life 
and  limb  and  childhood  through  preventable 
accidents  and  bad  Industrial  conditions,  the 
reputation  of  American  tourists  In  Europe  as 
souvenir  thieves,  the  shameless  way  in  which 
supposed  respectable  people  display  their 
thefts  from  hotels  and  other  sources,  the  fre- 
quent heedless  disregard  of  others'  rights  to 
property  and  to  quiet  by  so  highly  privileged  a 
class  as  college  students  —  these  are  all  alike 
symptoms  of  the  old  and  new  disease  of  selfish 
lawlessness. 

As  civilization  goes  forward  It  becomes,  like 


1 62  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

the  evolution  of  animal  life,  more  and  more 
complex  and  delicate  in  its  adjustments.  The 
forces  employed,  too,  are  increasingly  powerful/ 
The  ability  of  the  selfish  lawlessness  of  a  few 
to  work  widespread  discomfort  and  disaster 
is  thereby  steadily  increased,  and  the  demand 
for  individual  self-control  in  the  same  meas- 
ure enlarged.  How  a  whole  nation  can  be 
terrorized  by  the  selfish  lawlessness  of  a  few 
was  demonstrated  in  Great  Britain  by  the 
militant  suffragettes,  and  is  being  demon- 
strated anew  by  the  growing  frightfulness  of 
the  European  War.  One  selfish  boy  and  a 
paint  pot  can  give  discomfort  to  a  community 
for  months  and  even  years.  A  few  students 
regardless  of  the  property  rights  of  surround- 
ing communities  may  seriously  diminish  the 
privileges  of  an  entire  student  body  and 
blacken  their  reputation. 

Selfish  self-will  in  any  realm,  let  us  be  sure, 
is  no  true  liberty;  rather  is  it  a  sure  road  to 
cutting  short  our  largest  liberties.  We  must 
rather  be  able  to  say  with  Goethe  :  "I  learned 
that  the  unspeakable  value  of  true  freedom 
consisted  not  in  doing  what  we  please,  or  all 
that  circumstances  allow,  but  in  the  power  of 
doing  at  once  and  without  restraint  whatever 
we  consider  right." 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  PARADOX     163 

VI 

The  Achievement  of  True  Freedom 

This  true  freedom  the  New  Testament  not 
only  clearly  conceives,  but  it  points  the  one 
eternal  way  to  reach  it. 

Religion  itself  remains,  —  what  Professor 
James  called  it,  —  the  one  great  unlocker  of 
men's  powers,  —  the  one  great  emancipator 
of  the  human  soul.  Our  absolute  human 
dependence  still  bears  witness,  how  inevitably 
we  are  made  for  God,  how  certainly  we  need 
to  become  "partakers  of  the  divine  nature," 
if  we  are  to  fulfill  the  purpose  of  our  creation. 
As  surely  as  man  is  made  capable  of  religion, 
so  surely  is  the  largest  life  not  possible  to  him 
until  he  opens  his  being  to  the  tides  of  the 
divine  life,  to  the  in-working  of  the  Spirit  of 
God.  The  New  Testament  emphasis,  there- 
fore, upon  the  doctrine  of  the  Spirit,  is  an 
inevitable  emphasis.  And  the  so-called  "new 
thought"  of  our  time  is  only  a  less  rational 
putting  of  the  sense  of  our  absolute  depend- 
ence on  the  Spirit  of  God.  That  the  New 
Testament  should  insist  that  we  are  to  be 
born  of  the  Spirit,  that  we  are  to  walk  in  the 
Spirit,  that  we  are  to  have  in  us  the  witness  of 


i64  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

the  Spirit,  means,  not  that  there  is  the  magical 
application  to  us  of  some  thing  or  patent 
process,  but  the  bringing  in  of  a  great  new 
personal  relation  that  becomes  the  source  of 
all  else  in  life,  —  a  new  force,  a  new  capacity, 
a  new  hope.  And  this  new  force  of  life  coun- 
terworks the  forces  of  death.  In  the  moral 
as  in  the  physical  life,  the  only  real  protection 
against  disease  and  decay  is  abounding  life. 
And  in  the  light  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Spirit, 
God's  free  forgiveness  is  seen  to  mean,  not  the 
magical  setting  aside  of  the  consequences  of 
our  evil  choosing,  but  the  counterworking  of 
those  consequences  by  a  new  tide  of  life  with 
its  own  consequences  of  further  life. 

It  is  only  to  put  the  same  great  method  of 
life  in  slightly  different  form,  when  it  is  in- 
sisted, with  Paul  and  with  Drummond,  that 
men's  greatest  need  is  persistent  association 
with  Christ.  And  it  is  no  outworn  way  of 
life,  which  is  so  suggested  even  to  the  man 
of  the  twentieth  century.  For  that  simply 
means  that  acquaintance  with  God,  as  with 
any  other  person,  must  be  obtained  through 
his  greatest  and  most  significant  self-manifes- 
tation. It  is  because  men  have  felt  that  they 
found  just  this  in  Christ  that  he  has  come  to 
have    for    them    such    supreme    significance. 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL   PARADOX      165 

That  this  is  a  real  experience  and  not  a  vision 
(says  Professor  Drummond),  that  this  life  is  possible 
to  men,  is  being  lived  by  men  to-day,  is  simple  bio- 
graphical fact.  From  a  thousand  witnesses  I  cannot 
forbear  to  summon  one.  The  following  are  the  words 
of  one  of  the  highest  intellects  this  age  has  known,  a 
man  who  shared  the  burdens  of  his  country  as  few  have 
done,  and  who,  not  in  the  shadows  of  old  age,  but  in 
the  high  noon  of  his  success,  gave  this  confession  to  the 
world:  "I  want  to  speak  to-night  only  a  little,  but 
that  little  I  desire  to  speak  of  the  sacred  name  of 
Christ,  who  is  my  life,  my  inspiration,  my  hope,  and 
my  surety.  I  cannot  help  stopping  and  looking  back 
upon  the  past.  And  I  wish,  as  if  I  had  never  done  it 
before,  to  bear  witness,  not  only  that  it  is  by  the  grace 
of  God,  but  that  it  is  by  the  grace  of  God  as  mani- 
fested in  Christ  Jesus,  that  I  am  what  I  am.  I  recog- 
nize the  sublimity  and  grandeur  of  the  revelation  of 
God  in  His  eternal  fatherhood  as  one  that  made  the 
heavens,  that  founded  the  earth,  and  that  regards  all 
the  tribes  of  the  earth,  comprehending  them  in  one 
universal  mercy ;  but  it  is  the  God  that  is  manifested 
in  Jesus  Christ,  revealed  by  His  life,  made  known  by 
the  inflections  of  His  feelings,  by  His  discourse,  and 
by  His  deeds  —  it  is  that  God  that  I  desire  to  confess 
to-night,  and  of  whom  I  desire  to  say,  '  By  the  love  of 
God  in  Christ  Jesus  I  am  what  I  am.'  ...  In  look- 
ing back  upon  my  experience,  that  part  of  my  life 
which  stands  out,  and  which  I  remember  most  vividly, 
is  just  that  part  that  has  had  some  conscious  associa- 
tion with  Christ.  All  the  rest  is  pale,  and  thin,  and 
lies  like  clouds  on  the  horizon.  Doctrines,  systems, 
measures,  methods  —  what  may  be  called  the  necessary 


1 66  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

mechanical  and  external  part  of  worship;  the  part 
which  the  senses  would  recognize  —  this  seems  to  have 
withered  and  fallen  off  like  leaves  of  last  summer; 
but  that  part  which  has  taken  hold  of  Christ 
abides." 

"Can  anyone  hear  this  life-music,"  Profes- 
sor Drummond  adds,  "with  its  throbbing  re- 
frain of  Christ,  and  remain  unmoved  by  envy 
or  desire  ?  Yet,  till  we  have  lived  like  this 
we  have  never  lived  at  all." 

In  such  a  vital  personal  relation  to  God, 
through  his  great  self-revelation  in  Christ, 
the  free  grace  of  religion  becomes  the  natural 
root  of  law-abiding  character.  For  only  so 
does  the  personal  fully  replace  the  legal ;  only 
so  does  solid  hope  come  in  ;  only  so,  satisfying 
freedom  and  a  permanently  enlarging  life. 
For  as  soon  as  the  moral  command  is  seen  to 
be  the  loving  father's  will  for  his  children, 
so  soon  it  is  seen  to  be  in  itself  not  only  a 
promise  of  life,  but  a  way  of  life,  and  law  and 
liberty  are  forever  reconciled. 

The  circumstances  of  our  time  are  such  as 
almost  to  compel  thoughtful  men  to  try  to 
think  through  again  this  fundamental  para- 
dox of  liberty  and  law.  For  we  are  living  in 
a  world  of  unusually  disturbed  standards  and 
values ;    though   it   really  holds   no  problem 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  PARADOX     167 

essentially  new.  We  are  all  being  vehemently- 
urged  to  take  various  one-sided  positions,  as 
though  a  totally  new  light  had  just  dawned 
on  the  world. 

But  in  this  fundamental  paradox  we  can- 
not be  true  to  the  ideals  of  any  adequate 
education,  and  be  one-sided.  For  we  have 
learned,  we  may  hope,  the  psychological 
necessity  of  both  self-assertion  and  self- 
surrender.  We  have  learned  the  scientific 
lesson  of  victory  and  liberty  through  insight 
into  law  and  obedience  to  it.  We  have 
learned  the  historic  lesson  of  the  constant 
necessity  of  both  historic  continuity  and  re- 
adjustment. We  have  learned  the  esthetic 
lesson  that  even  Art,  that  seems  the  freest 
expression  of  the  human  spirit,  has  its  inevi- 
table element  of  self-restraint. 

Therefore,  for  our  individual  lives,  we  are 
not,  on  the  one  hand,  to  lose  law  out  of  our 
life.  We  do  not  want  to  make  our  lives  a 
chaos,  but  a  cosmos.  On  the  other  hand,  we 
are  not  to  lose  freedom  out  of  our  life,  the 
freedom  of  children  of  God,  the  freedom  of 
self-realization,  the  freedom  of  utter  truth  to 
our  own  individuality  and  to  our  own  highest 
vision.  We  are  to  be  both  true  and  free. 
And  we  shall  be  both  true  and  free  if,  in  the 


i68  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

spirit  of  Jesus,  we  do  always  and  only  what  a 
genuine,  all-inclusive  love  requires. 

In  the  task  of  social  reconstruction,  too, 
that  is  pressing  upon  our  generation,  we  can- 
not evade  the  double  demand  of  the  law  of 
liberty. 

On  the  one  hand,  social  life  cannot  advance, 
nor  even  exist,  in  a  lawless  world.  Our  task 
on  this  side  will  be  three-fold :  to  help  to 
make  it  steadily  more  true,  first,  that  the 
laws  of  our  community  and  state  and  nation 
are  just  and  righteous  laws,  which  do  not 
count  things  more  sacred  than  persons,  which 
allow  for  the  necessary  constant  adjustments 
to  changing  conditions,  and  which  so  deserve 
the  support  of  all  good  men ;  second,  that  by 
the  patient  and  persistent  processes  of  educa- 
tion and  moral  enlightenment,  the  principles 
embodied  in  the  laws  are  enthroned  in  the 
reason  and  conscience  of  the  community ;  and 
third,  that  so  there  may  not  fail  that  steady 
self-discipline  and  free  self-control  and  obedi- 
ence which  can  alone  make  laws  of  any  final 
avail. 

On  the  other  hand,  social  life  is  not  worth 
living  without  freedom.  At  the  foundation  of 
all  rational  society,  therefore,  there  must  be 
basic  reverence  for  the  individual  personality 


LIFE'S   FUNDAMENTAL  PARADOX     169 

—  respect  for  his  liberty  and  for  the  sanctity 
of  his  inner  person.  But  the  enormities  of 
unrestrained  selfishness  have  been  so  many; 
and  the  frightful  effects  of  vast  inequalities 
in  material  conditions  so  plain,  that  it  now 
seems  certain  that  society  has  before  it  a 
series  of  attempts  inordinately  to  regulate  the 
individual,  which  are  certain  to  provoke  in 
turn  a  reaction  to  an  equally  exaggerated 
liberty.  But  neither  extreme  should  shut 
our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  we  cannot  make  a 
life  worth  living  without  freedom ;  and  that, 
as  Hobhouse  puts  it,  ''the  true  opposition  is 
between  the  control  that  cramps  the  personal 
life  and  the  spiritual  order,  and  the  control 
that  is  aimed  at  securing  the  external  and 
material  conditions  of  their  free  and  unim- 
peded development";  and  with  clear  dis- 
crimination we  must  fight  the  first  kind  of 
control,  and  stand  for  the  second.  Only  so 
can  the  largest  liberty  come. 

In  these  deeper  questions  of  the  personal 
and  social  life  rules  cannot  be  given.  Prin- 
ciples alone  avail.  Just  how,  in  the  perplex- 
ing individual  situations  which  we  are  all  to 
confront,  these  principles  are  to  be  applied 
no  man  can  tell.  And  it  is  well  that  it  is  so. 
For   our   own   growth    and    enlargement   are 


I70  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

themselves  to  be  found  in  the  solving  and  re- 
solving of  this  perpetual  paradox  of  human 
life  —  the  paradox  of  liberty  and  law. 

A  further  fundamental  question  of  great 
practical  import  confronts  the  Christian  ideal- 
ist, —  the  increasingly  pressing  question  of 
Christian  unity.  For  the  conflicts  within 
Christian  ranks  cannot  but  cast  doubt  upon 
the  adequacy  of  the  Christian  ideal.  How  is 
that  Christian  unity  to  be  conceived  and 
sought  ? 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    QUESTION    OF     CHRISTIAN    UNITY  — 
THE   CONFESSION  OF  CHRIST 

In  our  efforts  for  the  union  of  all  Christians, 
is  there  already  a  unity  that  we  are  trying 
more  adequately  to  express,  or  are  we  seeking 
to  create,  out  of  hand,  a  unity  that  is  now 
quite  non-existent  ?  If  we  did  not  believe 
there  was  already  a  real  and  vital  unity  of 
spirit,  should  we  be  seeking  a  closer  union  ? 
What,  then,  is  the  unity  of  spirit  which  alone 
keeps  all  our  efforts  for  closer  union  from 
being  utterly  vain  and  futile  ? 


The  One  Uniting  Word  is  Christian 

Doubtless  it  is  true,  as  a  recent  theological 
treatise  says,  that  union  cannot  come  "by 
alleging  'unity  of  spirit'  as  an  excuse  for 
acquiescence  in  actual  disunion";  but  it  is 
even  more  to  be  feared  that  such  under- 
estimation   of    the    significance    of   unity   of 

171 


172  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

spirit  as  seems  here  implied,  will  make  actual 
union  impossible.  It  is  simply  and  solely 
that  unity  of  spirit,  which  makes  it  worth 
while  to  talk  about  union  at  all.  What, 
then,  is  that  unity  of  spirit  ^  We  are  plainly 
seeking,  are  we  not,  the  more  manifest  union 
of  Christendom ;  that  all  the  Christian  forces 
of  every  name  may  present  a  united  front  to 
the  world.  We  are  seeking  the  union  of  all 
believers  in  Christianity,  of  all  Christian 
people,  of  all  who  think  Christianity  the 
highest  and  final  religion,  of  all  who  believe 
Christ  to  be  the  supreme  revealer  of  God,  of 
all  those  who  find  the  great  source  of  their 
spiritual  life  in  God's  revelation  of  himself  in 
Christ,  of  all  who  count  themselves,  first  and 
foremost,  learners  of  Christ.  The  one  uniting 
word  is  Christian.  We  are  seeking  the  union 
of  all  confessors  of  Christ.  This  is  our  real 
unity :  that  we  all,  with  loyal  devotion,  con- 
fess Christ.  This  is  what  touches  our  hearts 
and  makes  us  long  for  mutual  understanding 
and  for  union.  This  other's  loyalty  to  Christ 
is  like  my  own ;  —  that  is  the  great  moving 
consideration.  And  this  is  a  far  deeper  and 
more  significant  thing,  we  may  not  forget, 
than  any  union  of  effort  or  plan  or  creed  or 
organization    that   might   grow   out   of   that 


THE  QUESTION  OF   CHRISTIAN  UNITY     173 

unity  of  spirit,  highly  desirable  as  that  closer 
union  is.  But  we  shall  not  make  headway 
toward  a  valuable  union  by  putting  the  second- 
ary and  derivative  in  place  of  the  primary  and 
original  —  by  making  external  union  more 
than  unity  of  spirit. 

Let  us  glory,  then,  in  the  unity  that  is 
already  ours,  nor  fail  to  appreciate  its  sig- 
nificance. For  nothing  conceivable  can  give 
such  actual  and  genuine  unity  as  common 
loyalty  to  a  person.  The  greater  that  person- 
ality, the  more  significant  the  resulting  unity. 
Where  that  person  is  the  supreme  personality 
of  history,  and  believed  by  his  confessors  to 
be  the  supreme  revelation  of  God  himself  — 
the  personality  that  has  redeemed  their  life 
—  the  unity  of  spirit  is  the  greatest  attainable. 
No  uniformity  of  creed,  of  ritual,  of  institu- 
tion, of  concerted  plan,  of  government,  could 
possibly  bring  so  meaningful  a  unity. 

Doubtless  the  very  oneness  of  human  nature, 
body  and  mind,  insures  that  the  spirit  requires 
embodiment ;  that  every  idea  must  have  some 
mechanical  presentment,  some  answering 
means,  some  organization,  some  institution. 
But  the  body  is  not  thereby  made  of  equal 
importance  with  the  spirit.  The  significance 
lies  nevertheless  in  the  spirit  back  of  all.     We 


174  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

need  to  recall  both  sides  of  Lotze's  funda- 
mental philosophical  thesis  and  see  "how  abso- 
lutely universal  is  the  extent  and  at  the  same 
time  how  completely  subordinate  the  sig- 
nificance of  the  mission  which  mechanism 
has  to  fulfil  in  the  structure  of  the  world." 
Doubtless  Christianity  must  have  some  exter- 
nal embodiment  of  creed,  of  ritual,  of  worship, 
of  organization ;  but  no  single  particular  em- 
bodiment is  essential,  and  all  are  completely 
subordinate  in  significance. 

II 

Temperamental  Differences 

In  every  form  of  expression  of  our  unity  of 
spirit  in  loyal  devotion  to  Christ,  individual 
temperamental  differences  will  manifest  them- 
selves, and  ought  to  manifest  themselves.  To 
insist  on  uniformity  in  any  of  these  expressions 
is  to  make  real  union  impossible.  As  unity 
is  more  and  other  than  union,  so  is  union 
more  and  other  than  uniformity.  Even  the 
"Lambeth  Quadrilateral,"  supposing  that  all 
could  agree  in  all  four  of  its  points,  is  still  an 
altogether  unsatisfactory  basis  of  union,  for 
one  reason,  just  because  it  looks  to  too  great 
uniformity,  and  tends  to  conceive  the  union 


THE  QUESTION  OF   CHRISTIAN  UNITY     175 

as  thereby  accomplished.  As  surely  as  it  is 
not  compromise  but  comprehension  which  is 
needed,  and  as  surely  as  we  are  all  more  likely 
to  be  right  in  the  affirmations  that  mean  most 
to  us,  rather  than  in  our  negations  of  things 
that  do  not  appeal  to  us ;  so  surely  the  road 
to  any  union  worth  while  must  not  be  a  pre- 
scription of  some  upon  others  of  favorite  ex- 
pressions of  any  kind.  If  others  find  a  cer- 
tain means  really  helpful  in  the  expression  of 
their  devotion  to  Christ  that  we  do  not  find 
helpful,  they  must  have  liberty  to  use  that 
means,  or  lack  of  means,  but  not  to  prescribe 
it  upon  any  others.  Liberty  to  use  but  not 
to  prescribe  is  essential.  However  certain  it 
is  that  differences  in  psychological  tempera- 
ment must  be  taken  into  account  in  religion, 
and  that  these  differences  are  often  wide  — 
like  the  so-called  "Catholic"  and  "Protes- 
tant" temperaments — we  still  must  see  with 
absolute  clearness  that  the  truly  essential 
thing  is  not  this  or  the  other  of  the  different 
ways  of  approach  to  God  in  Christ,  but  the 
desire  and  purpose  so  to  approach  God,  and 
the  evidence  in  life  that  the  soul  has  found 
God  and  been  accepted  of  him.  We  have  to 
get  back  of  all  these  differences  of  tempera- 
mental expression  to  that  unity  of  spirit  that 


176  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

makes  it  possible  to  call  both  types  of  people 
Christian ;  that  makes  them  able  to  recognize 
in  each  other  unmistakable  loyalty  to  Christ. 

Ill 

A  True  Organic  Unity 

The  truth  is  that  we  have  been  very  slow  in 
coming  to  recognize  in  religion  —  what  has 
been  long  recognized  in  philosophy  and  social 
theory  —  what  a  true  unity  is ;  that  unity 
should  be  indeed  organic,  though  in  a  different 
sense  from  that  often  meant;  and  that  true 
organic  unity  presupposes  differences,  not 
uniformity.  Uniformity  gives  only  a  sand- 
heap  of  identical  atoms,  but  no  true  unity. 
Paul's  epoch-making  figure  of  the  body  of 
Christ  with  many  different  members  and 
many  different  offices  must  not  be  allowed  to 
slip  from  our  minds.  We  cannot  get  this 
higher  unity  of  an  organic  body  without  dif- 
ferent members  and  different  functions. 
These  very  differences  are  necessary  if  the 
parts  of  the  body  are  to  be  members  one  of 
another,  and  are  to  be  bound  together  into 
the  more  significant  unity  of  the  whole  organic 
body.  Paul's  figure  of  the  organism,  thus, 
that  became  so  influential  later  in  philosophic, 


THE  QUESTION  OF   CHRISTIAN   UNITY     177 

ethical,  and  social  thinking,  thinks  of  a  true 
unity,  but  nowhere  of  uniformity. 

IV 

Uniformity  Not  Desirable 

Can  we  make  it  plain  to  ourselves  that  uni- 
formity is  in  no  sense  the  true  aim  of  our 
efforts  for  a  union  of  all  Christians  ?  No 
doubt,  back  of  all  the  essential  unity  of  spirit 
there  must  be  certain  implications  of  creed, 
of  worship,  of  government,  of  organization. 
But  our  age  ought  certainly  to  be  able  to  come 
to  this  problem  of  Christian  union  in  all  these 
respects,  with  a  different  vision  than  that  of 
preceding  centuries. 

Even  with  reference  to  the  underlying 
creedal  statements,  it  should  be  remembered, 
we  are,  in  the  first  place,  not  seeking  for  all 
Christians  the  kind  of  compromise  statement 
that  would  be  involved,  for  example,  in  a 
modern  Westminster  Confession.  Readers  of 
history  may  not  shut  their  eyes  to  the  fact 
that  there  were  considerable  divergences  of 
view  in  the  gathering  out  of  which  came  that 
creedal  statement;  and  that  the  statement 
finally  reached  did  not  mean  that  all  these 
divergences   had  disappeared    (though   some- 


178  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

thing  of  that  may  well  have  happened),  so 
much  as  that  ingenious  men  had  found,  upon 
the  disputed  points,  language  sufficiently 
vague  and  ambiguous  to  allow  all  parties  to 
read  their  own  views  into  it.  Now,  such  a 
compromise  creed  is  not  destitute  of  value ;  — 
it  means  some  real  gain  in  agreement  and  it 
may  give  a  new  sense  of  unity  to  those  accept- 
ing it.  But  its  value  is  often  mistakenly  con- 
ceived, and  may  turn  into  a  positive  damage, 
if  the  creed  be  used  as  a  universal  prescription, 
or  if  it  be  thought  to  mean  real  uniformity  of 
detailed  belief.  Most  creeds  have  wrought 
untold  damage  in  this  direction. 

It  should  be  equally  clear  to  the  modern 
man,  in  seeking  some  basal  statement  of 
belief,  that  it  is  no  mere  average  of  ideas 
which  is  sought.  Such  an  average  is  like  the 
abstract  average  of  the  statistician  which  cor- 
responds to  no  real  concrete  fact.  It  is  like 
the  statue  of  an  abstract  virtue :  it  lacks  the 
convincing  reality  of  the  concrete  living 
thing.  One  may  reach  in  that  way  a  creed, 
that  is  not  the  living  creed  for  any  one  of  all 
who  subscribe  to  it  —  a  creed  that  is  not  for 
any  of  them  a  natural  expression  of  their  own 
vital  faith. 

Still  less  should  the  basic  confession  of  faith 


THE  QUESTION  OF   CHRISTIAN  UNITY     179 

be  the  barest  minimum  of  belief  in  which  all 
might  conceivably  agree.  The  religious  ex- 
perience of  the  Christian  ought  rather  to 
express  itself  with  increasing  richness,  and 
reach  out  in  many  directions.  The  psycho- 
logical law  is,  that  that  which  is  not  expressed 
dies.  And  religious  experience  needs  clear 
and  thoughtful  expression  in  significant  state- 
ments as  well  as  in  life.  It  is  no  underesti- 
mate of  the  value  of  creedal  statements  that 
IS  here  involved ;  rather,  it  is  so  alone  that 
its  true  place  is  given  to  the  creedal  statement. 
We  ought  to  see  that  just  because  of  different 
temperaments,  different  environments,  and 
different  modes  of  education  there  will  be 
different  reflections  of  the  Christ  that  we 
confess,  different  expressions  of  what  the  life 
he  has  called  out  in  us  means.  And  the 
organic  unity  which  is  to  be  positively  sought 
is  that  which  recognizes  and  preserves  these 
differences ;  that  contends  for  the  value  of 
every  such  honest  reflection  of  the  life  of 
Jesus,  rather  than  seeks  a  deadening  identity 
of  expression.  The  New  Testament  itself  con- 
sists of  a  series  of  such  reflections  of  Christ. 

It  is  true  that  Christianity  looks  to  life, 
and  that  Christian  doctrine  must  bear  on  life, 
and  that  the  differences  between  one  Chris- 


i8o  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

tian  statement  of  belief  and  another  are  likely 
to  lie  more  in  the  realm  of  the  philosophies 
than  in  the  realm  of  life.  It  is  true  that  we 
may  well  put  our  emphasis  on  the  strictly 
religious  and  practical  purpose  of  the  Bible 
as  intending  to  reveal  to  us  God  and  to  give 
inspiration  to  some  real  sharing  in  his  life. 
And  it  is  true  that  the  one  thing  in  which  we 
may  all  agree  is  that  Christ  is  the  ultimate 
appeal.  We  can  all  agree  in  the  confession 
that  we  wish  to  make  our  thinking  in  this 
sense  truly  Christian.  Any  way  of  life,  too, 
has  inevitably  some  corresponding  convictions 
that  call  for  thoughtful  expression.  Yet  we 
cannot  do  justice  to  a  true  conception  of  the 
organic  unity  of  Christians  without  seeing 
clearly  that  complete  uniformity  of  belief  and 
statement  is  both  impossible  and  undesirable.^ 


Complete  Uniformity  of  Belief  and 
Statement  Impossible 

Complete  uniformity  of  belief  and  state- 
ment is  impossible,  in  the  first  place,  because 

1  The  discussion  of  this  point,  it  should  be  said,  is  rather  closely 
parallel  to  that  in  my  Theology  and  the  Social  Consciousness,  pp.  167- 
177,  though  the  present  treatment  is  somewhat  fuller.  But  the 
argument  here  requires  recurrence  to  these  considerations. 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CHRISTIAN  UNITY     i8i 

it  is  difficult  indeed  for  any  of  us  to  tell  our 
real  inner  creed.  That  creed  is  the  creed 
that  finds  expression  in  life.  It  is  the  state- 
ment of  those  assumptions  that  are  implied 
in  deeds  and  spirit.  The  will,  thus,  has  its 
creed  as  well  as  the  intellect,  and  the  truths 
of  religion  must  be  wrought  out  rather  than 
merely  thought  out.  And  the  intellect  can 
formulate  only  very  imperfectly  the  truth 
that  the  will  has  wrought  out.  How  com- 
paratively empty  and  flat  the  greatest  truths 
sound  from  one  who  does  not  seem  to  have 
lived  them  into  existence  !  On  the  other  hand, 
how  significant  the  simplest  truths  become 
when  they  are  backed  by  a  great  life.  Now 
the  truth  which  so  lives  for  a  man  is  his  real 
creed,  and  that  real  creed  he  can  better  state 
at  the  end  of  his  complete  experience  than  at 
the  beginning.  It  is  still  more  impossible  for 
another's  formulation  completely  to  shadow 
forth  this  whole  life-experience. 

This  is  not  at  all  to  join  the  company  of 
those  who  wish  to  ''rule  the  doctrinal  element 
out  of  their  religion."  It  is  quite  a  different 
thing  from  that  to  insist  that  only  the  whole 
mind  can  reach  the  essential  meaning  of 
things ;  that  all  Christian  doctrine  looks 
directly  to  life,  means  something  for  life  and 


1 82  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

grows  directly  out  of  life ;  that  no  series  of 
propositions  can  possibly  set  forth  the  whole 
meaning  of  the  Christian  life ;  and  that  the 
acceptance  of  any  set  of  propositions  is  not 
the  acceptance  of  Christianity.  Thinking 
there  must  be,  earnest  and  hard,  and  every 
possible  attempt  to  express  the  fullest  results 
of  this  thinking  in  ordered  statement  of  doc- 
trine —  to  reach  a  comprehensive  intellectual 
unity  that  shall  bring  our  religious  beliefs 
into  relation  to  all  the  rest  of  our  thinking. 
All  this  is  highly  important  and  helpful. 
But  even  so,  doctrine  is  means,  not  end ;  an 
expression  of  life  rather  than  life  itself.  The 
intellect  serves  life  but  may  not  dominate  it. 

Complete  uniformity  of  belief  and  statement 
therefore  is  impossible,  first  of  all,  because  we 
are  none  of  us  really  able  to  make  an  accu- 
rate statement  even  of  our  own  creed.  It  is 
impossible  also  because  if  two  persons  should 
agree  in  adopting  the  same  formula  of  words, 
even  these  same  words  must  be  interpreted 
out  of  diif  erent  inheritances,  training,  environ- 
ment and  experiences,  and  the  emphasis  and 
meaning  will  change  accordingly;  and  they 
will  change  even  in  the  same  individual  from 
time  to  time.  Unalterable  doctrine  is  thus 
impossible.     Any  true  acceptance  of  a  creed 


THE  QUESTION  OF   CHRISTIAN  UNITY     183 

involves  every  time  a  kind  of  creative  activity 
on  the  part  of  the  individual  affirming  the 
confession.  This  means  that  the  different 
temperament,  the  different  point  of  view, 
and  the  different  emphasis  cannot  help  affect- 
ing every  man's  creed.  It  is  true  of  a  man's 
creed  as  of  his  environment  that  the  only 
effective  portions  are  those  to  which  he 
attends ;  and  the  points  of  attention  vary 
from  time  to  time. 

VI 

Complete  Uniformity  of  Belief  and 
Statement  Undesirable 

But  it  is  not  only  true  that  complete  uni- 
formity of  belief  and  statement  is  impossible, 
it  is  equally  true  that,  were  it  attainable,  it 
would  be  undesirable.  We  are  dealing  with 
those  truths  that  have  to  do  with  the  infinite 
God  himself,  and  with  human  relations  to 
that  infinite  God.  We  can  only  approximate 
to  the  infinite  truth  so  sought  by  seeking  from 
every  soul  the  most  honest  expression  of  his 
experience  and  so  sharing  our  experiences  with 
each  other.  The  situation  is  like  that  illus- 
trated by  Leibnitz's  figure  of  the  mirrors  sur- 
rounding the  market-place.     Each  mirror  gives 


1 84  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

its  reflection  from  one  point  of  view,  and  it  is 
only  by  combining  all  these  reflections  that 
the  complete  view  of  all  the  aspects  of  the 
market-place  could  result.  We  need  indis- 
pensably the  supplementing  help  that  comes 
from  sharing  in  the  best  vision  of  other  souls. 
And  when  one  thinks  how  it  is  that  the 
truth  makes  progress  in  the  world,  he  finds 
another  reason  for  not  desiring  uniformity  of 
statement  in  religious  belief.  For  the  truth 
comes,  in  any  case,  not  by  all  the  others 
giving  way  to  some  single  authoritative  state- 
ment, but  by  each  bringing  honestly  and  care- 
fully his  own  matured  conviction,  in  order 
that  out  of  all  these  presentations  there  may 
come  a  larger  result  than  any  one  brought  to 
the  conference.  Any  one  of  us  can  hope  to 
make  progress  in  the  truth  only  so  far  as  he 
can  increasingly  supplement  his  own  view  by 
some  participation  in  those  of  others.  From 
this  point  of  view,  the  union  of  Christians, 
so  far  as  creedal  statements  are  concerned, 
should  be  much  like  that  of  a  group  of  scien- 
tific workers ;  they  are  united  in  the  pursuit 
of  the  truth.  The  one  essential  is  loyalty  to 
the  truth  —  utterly  honest  observation  and 
report,  with  no  careless  echoing  of  another. 
Such  agreement  as  then  results  has  genuine 


THE  QUESTION  OF   CHRISTIAN  UNITY     185 

significance.  But  it  in  turn  is  regarded  as  no 
final  goal.  These  scientific  workers  seek  a 
series  of  progressively  successful  attempts  to 
formulate  the  world  they  study.  Their  union 
is  in  this  one  aim.  Should  not  the  union  of 
Christians,  so  far  as  their  creedal  statements 
are  concerned,  be  similarly  conceived  ? 

And  in  the  realm  of  morals  and  religion  it 
IS  peculiarly  important  that  uniformity  should 
not  be  sought,  because  in  this  realm,  above 
all,  we  cannot  and  we  must  not  simply  repeat 
one  another.  My  confession  of  my  faith 
must  be  honestly  and  vitally  my  own.  Re- 
ligious doctrines  are  an  expression  of  life 
already  present,  and  they  are  of  value  only 
so.  If  my  creedal  statement  is  not  an  honest 
expression  of  conviction  growing  out  of  life, 
it  is  a  hindrance  rather  than  a  help,  even  to  my 
own  life;  for,  as  a  great  German  theologian 
has  said,  "conscious  untruth  tends  to  drive 
from  Christ."  And  every  untrue  testimony 
of  such  a  kind  tends  also  to  mislead  others. 

For  every  one  of  these  reasons,  it  is  not 
desirable  to  check  the  expression  of  religious 
faith  in  constantly  revised  statement  of  belief, 
nor  to  forbid  theories.  If  the  fellowship  of  the 
united  church  is  to  be  highly  significant  and 
capable   of  growing  enrichment,   it  must  be 


1 86  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

honestly  representative  of  the  full  sweep  of 
the  growing  experience  of  all  Christians.  It 
can  be  this  only  if  it  refuses  to  prescribe  uni- 
formity, and  admits  to  its  fellowship  the  differ- 
ing members  and  differing  functions,  and  so 
realizes  Paul's  ideal  of  us  all  as  members  one 
of  another. 

VII 

Our  Real  Unity  in  Our  Common  Life  in 
Christ 

It  becomes,  thus,  increasingly  clear  where 
our  real  unity  lies  ;  namely,  in  the  common  life 
we  share,  in  the  common  experience  we  have, 
in  the  common  revelation  of  God  in  Christ, 
and  in  the  common  surrender  to  it.  The  best 
analogy  of  our  religious  faith  is  to  be  found 
in  what  the  same  great  personality  may  mean 
to  different  people.  Our  entire  emphasis, 
therefore,  is  to  be  laid  on  the  word  Christian. 
Our  solution  of  Christian  fellowship  even  in 
the  realm  of  creedal  statement  is  thus  not  by 
abstraction  but  by  concreteness  ;  not  by  false 
simplicity,  but  by  living  fullness  ;  not  by  rela- 
tion to  propositions,  but  by  relation  to  facts. 
All  our  confessions  of  faith  must  come  back 
to  an  experience  like  that  that  Paul  had  in 
mind  when  he  wrote :   "When  it  was  the  good 


THE  QUESTION  OF  CHRISTIAN  UNITY     187 

pleasure  of  God  to  reveal  his  Son  in  me." 
The  revelation  is  of  God,  it  is  through  Christ, 
and  it  is  in  me.  This,  in  some  form,  is  re- 
flected in  every  Christian  experience  and  in 
every  Christian  confession  of  faith.  It  is  the 
primal  confession,  that  comes  out  in  the  primi- 
tive baptismal  formula  and  benediction  of  the 
New  Testament.  We  shall  come  together,  as 
we  more  and  more  truly  confess  Christ,  as 
our  creedal  statements  conform  more  and 
more  perfectly  to  his  spirit  and  to  his  em- 
phases. One  of  the  greatest  reasons,  thus, 
for  a  persistent  unwillingness  to  give  decisive 
weight  in  the  union  of  Christians  to  any  his- 
torical creed,  however  important  as  historical 
it  may  be,  is  because,  as  Fairbairn  puts  it, 
"the  church,  so  long  as  it  believes  in  the 
divinity  of  its  Founder,  is  bound  to  have  a 
history  which  shall  consist  of  successive  and 
progressively  successful  attempts  to  return  to 
him.  He  can  never  be  transcended ;  all  it 
can  ever  be  is  contained  in  him ;  but  its 
ability  to  interpret  him  and  realize  his  religion 
ought  to  be  a  developing  ability." 

Our  basis,  thus,  as  Christians  is  everywhere 
in  the  common  life  in  Christ,  in  that  personal 
relation  to  God  in  Christ  that  includes  the 
whole  man.     But  loyalty  in  such  a  concrete 


1 88  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

personal  relation  is  a  far  higher  test  even  of 
belief  than  any  series  of  propositions  can  be. 
The  simple  question  —  ''How  would  Christ 
be  likely  to  think  and  to  speak  upon  this 
point  ?"  —  may  do  more  to  clarify  and  steady 
a  man's  expression  of  his  faith  than  anything 
else.  No  question  is  so  deep-going,  so  reveal- 
ing. Even  in  the  realm  of  the  conception  and 
statement  of  our  faith,  the  most  stimulating 
and  truly  conserving  of  all  influences  is  the 
love  of  Christ.  "No  man  can  say,  Jesus  is 
Lord,  but  in  the  Holy  Spirit."  We  confess 
Christ.  "Other  foundation  can  no  man  lay 
than  that  which  is  laid,  which  is  Jesus  Christ." 
And  just  as  in  our  statements  of  belief  we 
are  to  seek  not  uniformity  but  liberty  and 
comprehension  for  the  very  sake  of  a  larger 
faith  and  a  larger  life,  that  shall  lead  in  turn 
to  statements  still  more  adequate,  and  more 
truly  reflecting  Christ;  so  in  worship,  in 
organization,  in  forms  of  government,  in  life, 
and  in  active  service  we  must  give  the  largest 
liberty,  and  bring  all  back  continuously  and 
increasingly  to  the  test  of  the  spirit  of  Christ, 
in  the  hope  once  again  of  a  series  of  successive 
and  progressively  successful  attempts  to  ex- 
press Christ  in  these  ways,  too.  It  is  hopeless 
to  expect  the  Christian  world  to  be  satisfied 


THE  QUESTION  OF   CHRISTIAN  UNITY     189 

with  any  union  of  Christian  people,  that 
definitely  excludes  from  its  fellowship  those 
whose  desire  to  be  loyal  disciples  of  Christ 
cannot  be  doubted.  Where  Christ  has  already 
received,  the  church  cannot  reject.  We  are 
to  bear  honest  and  faithful  testimony  our- 
selves to  what  seems  to  us  most  Christian  in 
these  realms  of  worship  and  organization  and 
life,  and  we  are  to  be  willing  to  heed  with 
open  mind  the  similar  witness  of  other  Chris- 
tians, that  out  of  all  something  more  truly 
Christian  than  any  of  us  have  conceived  may 
come.  In  other  words,  our  Christian  union 
must  be  as  wide  as  our  Christian  unity  of 
spirit.  In  life,  in  statement  of  belief,  in 
worship,  in  institutions,  in  form  of  govern- 
ment —  in  all  alike  —  the  one  essential  is 
that  we  should  confess  Christ.  This  is  the 
one  great  primal  confession.  Less  than  this 
is  not  Christian ;  more  than  this  is  exclusive. 
This  question  of  Christian  unity  naturally 
leads  on  to  the  still  greater  fundamental  ques- 
tion —  the  question  of  Christianity  as  a  world 
religion.  That  question  may  be  appropriately 
faced  from  two  points  of  view :  the  point  of 
view  of  oriental  civilization,  and  the  point 
of  view  of  the  needs  of  the  modern  world,  as 
seen  in  the  present  world-shaking  war. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  QUESTION  OF  CHRISTIANITY  AS  A 
WORLD  RELIGION  I:  CHRISTIANITY 
THE  ONLY  HOPEFUL  BASIS  FOR  ORI- 
ENTAL CIVILIZATION 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  missionary- 
propaganda,  it  is  most  important,  as  others 
have  pointed  out,  that  the  claims  of  Chris- 
tianity to  be  the  absolute  and  final  religion 
should  be  clearly  recognized.  But  there  is 
another  less  drastic  inquiry  that  greatly  con- 
cerns alike  both  missionaries  and  Oriental 
nations ;  and  that  is  this  :  Does  any  other 
religion  than  Christianity  give  promise  of 
being  able  to  furnish  a  sufficient  spiritual 
basis  for  civilization  in  the  Orient,  even  in  its 
most  advanced  nation,  Japan  ?  This  question 
is  fairly  forced  upon  the  thoughtful  traveler, 
whether  interested  in  missions  or  not.  He 
knows  that  the  world  is  becoming  smaller  and 
more  unified  every  year.  He  sees  much  of 
Western  civilization  inevitably  spreading  over 
the  earth.     And  he  cannot  help  asking  him- 

190 


CHRISTIANITY  AS  A  WORLD  RELIGION     191 

self :  In  the  increasing  contacts  between  East 
and  West,  and  under  the  constant  pressure  of 
Western  education,  can  the  earlier  religious 
bases  of  Oriental  civilizations  suffice  or  even 
continue  ?  This  is  not  primarily  a  question 
of  missionary  propaganda  at  all.  It  is  not  a 
question  of  an  absolute  religion.  It  is  rather 
a  question  to  be  looked  at  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  Eastern  nations  themselves  —  a 
question  of  any  enduring  national  basis. 
And  there  are  not  lacking  indications  that 
many  Oriental  leaders  themselves  deeply  feel 
the  seriousness  of  the  problem  here  raised. 

I 

The    Need    of    an    Adequate     Spiritual 
Basis  for  Any  Civilization 

The  need  of  an  adequate  spiritual  basis  for 
an  enduring  and  progressive  national  life,  the 
Orient  will  hardly  deny.  And  the  more  the 
Occidental  thinks  of  it,  the  more  evident  the 
need  becomes.  Modern  psychology,  with  its 
insistent  emphasis  on  the  unity  of  man,  will 
hardly  allow  that  the  spiritual  in  man's 
nature  can  be  safely  isolated.  So  surely  as 
man  is  "incorrigibly  religious,"  so  surely  must 
he  ultimately  have  a  religion  capable  of  some 


192  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

reasonable  adjustment  to  conclusions  he  has 
been  forced  to  reach  in  other  departments  of 
his  life.  Both  the  individual  and  the  nation 
alike  must  live  finally  some  kind  of  unified 
life.  Their  historical  and  scientific  and  ethical 
findings  cannot  be  permanently  at  war  with 
their  religious  beliefs. 

This  is  all  the  more  true  since  religion,  just 
because  it  is  religion,  must  voice  convictions 
of  ultimate  and  universal  sources  and  values. 
Where  it  cannot  do  that,  it  has  ceased  to  exist 
as  religion,  and  remains  only  as  incongruous 
superstition  or  vague  misgiving.  There  must 
be,  therefore,  a  spiritual  basis  for  any  sig- 
nificant national  life.  Every  nation  worth 
the  while  has  had  some  conviction  of  divine 
calling  and  mission,  some  deeply  underlying 
even  where  unuttered  sense,  therefore,  of 
responsibility  and  accountability.  And  its 
life  has  thus  consciously  taken  on  a  meaning 
and  value  not  otherwise  conceivable.  These 
essentially  religious  convictions  have  entered 
like  iron  into  the  blood  of  the  nations,  to 
make  them  capable  of  what  else  had  been 
impossible. 

The  very  fact  that  whenever  men  have 
gotten  out  of  the  savage  stage,  they  feel  im- 
pelled to  go  quite  beyond  the  mere  satisfac- 


CHRISTIANITY  AS  A  WORLD  RELIGION     193 

tion  of  the  sense  appeal,  to  the  building  up  of 
historic,  scientific,  esthetic,  sociologic,  and 
ethical  interests,  is  itself  evidence  of  such  ideal 
thirsts  in  men,  as  can  find  their  natural  cul- 
mination only  in  religious  faith,  which  alone 
can  unify  and  justify  them  all.  No  nation 
can  throw  itself  with  all  its  soul  into  a  national 
task,  without  at  least  some  half  conscious 
faith  that  the  work  so  undertaken  is  not  to  be 
allowed  vainly  to  disappear,  but  will  be 
caught  up  into  the  enduring  life  of  the  world. 
No  nation  can  set  itself  whole-heartedly  to  the 
all-round  betterment  of  its  moral  life,  with- 
out faith  that  "the  universe  is  on  the  side  of 
the  will"  in  this  endeavor.  Convictions, 
thus,  intrinsically  religious,  logically  underlie 
all  the  ideal  achievements  and  endeavors  of 
the  nation  as  well  as  of  the  individual. 
Eucken  is  only  expressing  a  widely  prevalent 
and  growing  faith,  when  he  insists  that,  how- 
ever far  advanced  the  externals  of  a  civiliza- 
tion may  be,  there  are  needed,  as  indispen- 
sable, great  spiritual  convictions  if  the  life, 
whether  of  individual  or  of  nation,  is  at  all  to 
have  real  meaning  and  value.  And  Troeltsch 
has  recently  voiced  his  matured  belief  that, 
even  in  the  very  midst  of  the  most  developed 
Western  civilization,  the  inner  spiritual  faith 


194  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

of  Protestantism  is  required  to  preserve  even 
there  a  true  and  free  individualism. 

II 

The  Increasing  Sense  of  Need  of  a  New 
Spiritual  Basis  for  Oriental  Civili- 
zation 

This  much,  perhaps,  it  has  been  worth  while 
to  say  regarding  the  imperative  need  of  a 
spiritual  basis  for  any  civilization  worthy  the 
name.  That  many  of  the  most  thoughtful 
in  the  Oriental  nations  share  this  conviction 
is  manifest.  Multitudinous  religious  adjust- 
ments in  modern  Hinduism  in  India,  and 
evidences  of  religious  unrest  and  of  waning 
faith  in  the  older  religions  in  China  and  Japan, 
bear  witness.  Count  Okuma's  testimony  in  a 
recent  number  of  the  International  Review  of 
Missions,  and  the  calling  of  the  Conference  of 
the  three  religions  by  the  Japanese  Minister 
of  Home  Affairs,  particularly  show  how  press- 
ing the  religious  problem  is  felt  to  be  in  Japan, 
where  Western  education  has  been  most  fully 
welcomed.  It  Is  fitting,  therefore,  that  we 
should  have  Japan  especially  in  mind  as  we 
further  face  the  question  of  this  chapter. 

It  is   beyond   all  peradventure   clear  that 


CHRISTIANITY  AS  A  WORLD  RELIGION     195 

Japan's  older  civilization,  like  that  of  all  an- 
cient exclusive  states,  had  a  distinct  religious 
basis  that  was  definitely  avowed,  was  for  the 
time  singularly  effective,  and  was  of  the  very 
essence  of  the  nation's  life.  What  Mommsen 
says  of  the  ancient  exclusive  states  of  Europe 
was  even  more  emphatically  true  of  Japan. 
Japan  is  perhaps  unique  in  having  kept  this 
peculiar  kind  of  religious  basis  down  to  the 
present  day.  This  very  fact  makes  Japan's 
problem  all  the  more  critical ;  for  she  has  been 
attempting  to  bring  over  into  this  age  of 
modern  science,  of  historical  criticism,  and 
of  the  social  consciousness,  the  naive  faith  in 
divine  progenitors  that  characterized  the  far 
different  ancient  world.  Is  it  possible  that 
such  a  religious  basis  should  remain  effective 
or  even  continue  at  all  ? 

Nothing  seemed  to  the  writer  so  infinitely 
pathetic  in  the  Orient,  as  to  see  a  gifted  and 
powerful  nation  like  Japan  trying  to  build  its 
national  life  upon  the  foundation  of  the  Em- 
peror cult.  The  faith  had  to  have  an  element 
of  the  hysterical  in  it,  to  make  it  seem  real  at 
all.  A  man  of  Western  training  simply  can- 
not persuade  himself  that  the  attempt  can 
finally  prove  anything  but  futile.  The  foun- 
dation is  already  honeycombed.     It  can  even 


196  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

seem  to  continue  only  by  insisting  on  the 
divine  inspiration  of  the  imperial  rescript  on 
education  and  similar  pronouncements  of  the 
Emperor,  and  by  practically  forbidding  Japa- 
nese historians  to  speak  the  truth  about  early 
Japanese  history.  And  it  attempts,  more- 
over, a  spiritual  basis  for  Japanese  national 
life  that  can,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  have 
no  appeal  outside  of  Japan  itself.  Now  no 
modern  nation,  with  the  present  unifying  of 
the  world,  can  rest  in  a  religion  that  contains 
no  possibility  of  becoming  universal.  A  re- 
ligion that  does  not  fit  man  as  man  can  have 
no  future.  It  can  only  remain  a  wonder  that 
there  has  continued  so  long  even  a  semblance 
of  spiritual  foundation  for  Japanese  civiliza- 
tion in  the  Emperor  cult.  Thoughtful  Japa- 
nese have  not  awakened  too  soon  to  the  im- 
perative religious  need  of  their  national  life. 

For  the  outstanding  fact  in  the  Orient  is 
that  Western  education  is  inevitably  pressing 
in  upon  the  East.  That  Western  education 
brings  irrevocably  at  least  three  things : 
modern  science,  historical  criticism,  and  some 
measure  of  the  social  consciousness  of  the 
Western  world.  Every  one  of  these  necessa- 
rily tends  steadily  to  disintegrate  the  present 
religious  basis  of  Japanese  national  life.     Here 


CHRISTIANITY  AS  A  WORLD  RELIGION     197 

are  involved  new  standards  and  new  tests 
that  nothing  in  the  present-day  world  can 
wholly  evade.  In  the  end  the  pressure  of 
Western  education  upon  the  leaders  of  Japan's 
national  life  must  mean  either  the  giving  up 
of  any  really  spiritual  basis  for  their  national 
civilization,  or  the  insistent  demand  for  a 
religion  that  can  squarely  and  unequivocally 
meet  these  tests  of  modern  science,  of  his- 
torical criticism,  and  of  an  awakening  social 
consciousness. 

At  this  point,  it  should  not  be  forgotten 
that  there  has  never  been  a  concerted  move- 
ment to  introduce  into  the  Orient,  Western 
civilization  as  a  whole.  That  civilization  has 
spread  into  the  East,  along  two  widely  sepa- 
rated lines  —  the  commercial  and  the  mission- 
ary. It  was  originally  introduced  into  Japan 
for  commercial  ends  and  by  force,  and  so,  as 
it  were,  only  incidentally  and  very  partially. 
The  missionary  movement  supplemented  the 
commercial  movement  for  the  unselfish  end 
of  sharing  its  religious  best  with  the  Orient. 
Under  the  commercial  pressure,  the  Orient, 
and  Japan  especially,  were  forced  to  take  on 
Western  education  in  at  least  its  technological 
features  or  suffer  indefinite  exploitation  from 
the  West.     The  Western  education  so  taken 


198  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

on,  has  tended,  thus,  almost  inevitably  to  be 
not  only  purely  secular,  but  to  be  largely 
devoid  of  any  of  the  more  ideal  elements  of 
Western  civilization,  as  Hearn  strikingly  tes- 
tifies. The  effect  upon  religious  faith  has 
tended  to  be  all  the  more  disintegrating. 
The  missionary  influence  has  helped  those 
whom  it  has  reached  to  some  knowledge  of 
the  essentially  spiritual  factors  in  Western 
civilization.  But  it  has  naturally  not  been 
able  to  give  to  the  Japanese  as  a  nation  a 
really  unified  conception  of  Western  civiliza- 
tion as  a  whole.  The  total  result  is  that 
Western  civilization  in  its  entirety  can  hardly 
be  said  yet  to  have  been  naturalized  in  Japan. 
Its  most  essential  and  basic  spiritual  factors 
are  appreciated  and  welcomed,  it  must  be 
feared,  by  comparatively  few. 

From  the  point  of  view  simply  of  civiliza- 
tion, therefore,  one  must  rejoice  that  the  mis- 
sionary movement  has  accompanied  the  com- 
mercial in  the  advance  of  the  West  on  the 
East;  for  it  insures  at  least  that  Western 
civilization  shall  not  be  quite  misrepresented, 
and  shall  not  wholly  fail  to  share  its  best 
with  the  East.  From  the  same  point  of  view, 
too,  the  West  can  hardly  shake  off  a  keen 
sense  of  moral  obligation  to  the  East.     It  has 


CHRISTIANITY  AS  A  WORLD  RELIGION     199 

forced  upon  the  Orient  the  lower  and  material 
side  of  its  civilization ;  it  has  brought  an 
education  that  has  increasingly  tended  to  dis- 
integrate the  older  religious  faiths,  and  so  to 
cut  under  the  former  religious  foundations  of 
the  State ;  it  has  pressed  questions  that  Orien- 
tal religions  cannot  answer.  Now  for  these 
very  reasons,  it  is  bound  to  do  all  it  can,  to 
make  good  the  damage.  It  must  share  with 
the  Orient  its  highest  as  well. 

Ill 

The  Necessary  Threefold  Test  of  the 
Religious  Basis  of  a  Modern  Civili- 
zation 

The  religion  that  is  to  meet  the  need  of  the 
Orient,  and  especially  of  Japan,  in  the  crisis 
brought  upon  her  by  this  forced  contact  with 
Western  civilization,  must  be  that  religion 
that  is  best  able  to  meet  these  new  tests  of 
the  scientific  spirit  and  method,  of  historical 
criticism,  and  of  the  social  consciousness. 
What  are  the  probabilities  that  any  other 
religion  than  the  Christian  can  meet  this  need  ? 
Can  any  of  the  older  faiths  do  it  ?  Can  the 
Emperor  cult  or  Shinto  as  a  whole,  or  Bud- 
dhism or  Confucianism,  do  it  ^  Can  a  modern 
syncretism  do  it  ? 


200  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

1.  It  seems  plain,  for  the  reasons  already 
given,  that  the  Emperor  cult  is  doomed,  so  far 
as  its  ability  to  furnish  a  religious  basis  for 
Japan's  national  life  is  concerned.  The  re- 
ligious efforts  now  making  in  Japan  them- 
selves indicate  growing  conviction  upon  that 
point.  Can  a  return  to  Shinto  as  a  whole  do 
more  ?  The  Japanese  government  has  itself 
pronounced  judgment,  in  view  of  issues  pre- 
viously raised  by  Japanese  Christians,  that 
Shinto  is  not  itself  strictly  a  religion,  so  far  as 
the  government  has  employed  it,  nor  to  be  so 
interpreted.  Such  a  pronouncement  could  be 
possible  at  all,  only  because  the  religious  ele- 
ment in  Shinto  was  so  generally  felt  to  be 
exceedingly  tenuous.  When  one  adds  Aston's 
deliberate  judgment,  that  Shinto  has  had 
"hardly  anything  in  the  shape  of  a  code  of 
morals,"  one  would  have  to  deny  to  Japan 
any  modern  consciousness  at  all  to  believe 
that  she  could  remain  satisfied  with  such  a 
religious  basis.  Japan's  intense  race  loyalty 
may  give  seeming  vitality  to  such  a  basis  in 
its  native  religion  for  a  time,  but  it  were  an 
insult  to  Japan  to  believe  that  this  basis  can 
long  prove  satisfactory. 

2.  Can  its  borrowed  religions,  Buddhism 
and    Confucianism,  satisfy   the    need  ?     And 


CHRISTIANITY  AS  A  WORLD  RELIGION    201 

that  question  means,  it  is  to  be  remembered 
once  more,  Can  they  be  wrought  into  any 
consistent  and  organic  unity  with  those  fea- 
tures of  Western  education  that  in  some  degree 
Japan  has  felt  obliged  to  accept  —  with  the 
scientific  spirit  and  method,  with  historical 
criticism,  and  with  the  social  consciousness  ? 
For,  although  it  is  quite  true  that  these  features 
of  Western  education  have  hardly  penetrated 
the  mass  of  the  Japanese  people,  the  educated 
leaders  have  felt  them,  in  many  cases  deeply, 
and  they  cannot  ignore  or  evade  their  demands. 
No  religion,  certainly,  is  going  to  furnish  a  safe 
spiritual  basis  for  a  nation's  life  that  cannot 
command  the  whole-hearted  intellectual  and 
moral  respect  of  its  educated  leaders. 

Can  Confucianism  or  Buddhism  do  that  ? 
One  may  confess  a  hearty  admiration  for  the 
high  ethical  quality  of  Confucianism,  and  yet  be 
confident  that  it  cannot  furnish  a  sufficient  re- 
ligious basis  for  Japan's  civilization.  By  all 
means  let  the  full  value  of  its  ethical  inheritance 
be  retained  by  the  Japanese ;  but  a  religious 
basis  for  its  national  life  Confucianism  cannot 
give.  For  it  has  become  increasingly  clear  in 
recent  years  that  in  the  mind  of  Confucius 
himself,  it  was  not  in  any  strictness  a  religion, 
but  a  system  of  ethics,  and  a  system  of  ethics, 


202  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

moreover,  rather  narrowly  adapted  to  the 
Chinese.  Confucianism  has  never  satisfied 
China's  rehgious  needs.  It  gives  still  less 
promise  of  satisfying  the  religious  needs  of 
another  nation. 

May  it  be  hoped  that  Buddhism  could  suc- 
ceed better?  It  has  had  a  large  place  in 
Japan's  life.  It  is  alive  and  active.  It  has 
shown  some  capacity  for  ethical  adjustment 
to  the  modern  world.  It  has  in  Buddha  him- 
self one  of  the  world's  outstanding  personali- 
ties. Nevertheless,  it  is  hardly  too  much  to 
say,  that  the  native  ideals  of  Buddhism, 
whether  original  or  later,  are  precisely  those 
not  adapted  to  form  the  foundation  of  the 
civilization  of  a  modern  state.  Buddhism  is 
at  bottom  so  completely  pessimistic,  other- 
worldly and  antisecular  in  its  ideals,  that  it 
cannot  naturally  provide  the  motives  for  a 
progressive  modern  state.  Some  adjustment 
it  can  make.  Certain  important  virtues  it 
can  emphasize.  But  it  must  remain  un- 
naturalized in  any  truly  modern  civilization. 
And  all  this,  quite  independent  of  the  havoc 
that  historical  criticism  and  modern  science 
must  make  in  its  traditions,  its  abandonment 
of  original  Buddhism,  and  its  world  view. 

3.    Can,   then,   a  new   religious  syncretism 


CHRISTIANITY  AS  A  WORLD  RELIGION    203 

avail  ?  The  history  of  such  attempts  does 
not  encourage  hope  of  a  successful  issue. 
One  may  most  deeply  sympathize  with  those 
earnest  Japanese  leaders  who  are  seeking 
eclectically  to  build  up  some  new  religious 
basis  for  their  national  religious  life,  and  yet 
doubt  whether  the  movement  can  succeed,  if 
the  attempt  is  to  be  to  make  a  really  new 
religion.  One  feels  that  a  religion  that  is  to 
abide  must  have  the  vitality  of  an  organic 
growth,  and  can  hardly  be  manufactured  to 
order.  But  in  another  sense  —  as  an  honest 
Japanese  interpretation  of  essential  historical 
Christianity  —  it  is  quite  possible  that  the 
movement  may  attain  a  large  and  genuine 
success. 

If  the  Japanese  do  not  intend  to  insist  on 
inventing  a  new  religion  for  themselves,  there 
would  seem  to  be  every  reason  for  building 
deliberately  and  thoughtfully  on  historical 
Christianity.  If  Japan's  taking  on  of  modern 
civilization  and  its  basic  educational  ideas  is 
justified  at  all,  the  natural  corollary  is  the 
adoption  of  that  religion  that  so  permeates 
the  best  of  Western  civilization  and  has  made 
no  small  part  of  its  intellectual,  economic,  and 
humanitarian  conquests  possible,  through  its 
emphasis  on  freedom  of  conscience  and  so  on 


204  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

freedom  of  initiative  and  freedom  of  inves- 
tigation. We  call  it  naturally  a  Christian 
civilization. 

In  a  very  true  sense,  the  Christian  religion 
may  be  said  to  have  proved  to  be  a  survival 
of  the  fittest.  It  has  already  been  thoroughly 
tested  out  in  the  Occident,  in  the  face  of 
all  the  questions  now  raised  in  Japan.  It  has 
amply  proved  its  ability,  not  merely  to  exist 
in  the  modern  world,  and  not  merely  to 
adjust  itself  to  such  a  world,  but  to  furnish 
foundation,  motives,  standards,  and  ideals,  in- 
dispensable to  any  enduring  civilization.  It 
is  a  religion,  the  best  born  in  the  East,  and 
the  best  that  the  West  could  embrace,  and  it 
remains  the  best  the  West  in  turn  has  to  offer 
to  the  East.  It  would  seem  the  part  of  plain 
wisdom  for  Japan  to  take  advantage  of  the 
results  of  this  long  historical  testing  out  of 
Christianity  in  the  Occident,  with  its  civiliza- 
tion now  spreading  over  the  world,  and  not  to 
insist  on  attempting  instead  a  new  experiment 
necessarily  much  more  limited  in  every  way. 

Moreover,  a  religious  syncretism  is  doomed 
to  failure  at  the  most  vital  point.  Men  need 
to  be  able  to  believe  concerning  their  religion 
that  it  is  not  a  mere  man-made  product. 
They  need   indubitable  assurance  that  God 


CHRISTIANITY  AS  A  WORLD  RELIGION    205 

has  been  at  work  in  the  world,  that  he  has 
not  left  himself  without  witness,  but  has  so 
revealed  himself  as  to  call  out  irrevocable 
love  and  trust.  An  historical  religion  has 
here  a  priceless  advantage,  if  its  historical 
facts  are  certain  enough  and  great  and  sig- 
nificant enough.  For  men  need  to  be  sure 
that  they  are  seeking  not  merely  a  God  of 
their  own  dreams  and  imaginings  and  specu- 
lations, but  the  God  of  the  real  world,  con- 
cretely, indubitably  revealed. 

IV 

Only  Christianity  Can  Meet  these  Tests 
AND  Furnish  an  Adequate  Spiritual 
Basis  for  the  Modern  Civilization 
OF  THE  Orient 

Now,  it  is  because  of  what  Christianity  has 
here  to  offer  in  the  life  and  teaching  and  per- 
sonality of  Jesus,  that  it  has  a  matchless 
claim  on  the  attention  of  thoughtful  men 
seeking  a  real  religious  basis  for  their  own 
lives  and  for  their  nation's  civilization.  The 
great  facts  of  the  world  are  the  great  persons 
of  the  world.  No  other  facts  can  throw  such 
light  upon  the  nature  of  the  Power  back  of 
the  world.     The  personality  of  Jesus  is  great 


2o6  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

enough,  and  alone  great  enough,  to  give  an 
adequate  and  final  religious  basis  to  life,  per- 
sonal or  national.  Christianity's  greatest 
riches  lie  just  here. 

And  Christianity  has  proved  its  ability  to 
meet  specifically  the  tests  of  modern  education 
already  mentioned.  It  has  learned,  in  the 
first  place,  that  it  has  no  possible  quarrel 
with  modern  science,  so  long  as  it  remains 
science,  and  does  not  undertake  —  what  lies 
quite  outside  its  self-imposed  realm  —  the 
interpretation  of  ultimate  meanings.  Chris- 
tianity can  even  rather  rejoice  in  the  way  in 
which  modern  science  has  enormously  in- 
creased the  resources  of  power  and  wealth 
and  knowledge  available  for  ideal  ends ;  in 
the  challenge  that  it  thus  brings  to  all  the 
ideal  forces  ;  in  the  better  vision  it  has  brought 
of  a  world  enlarged,  unified,  evolving,  and  law 
abiding;  in  its  gift  of  a  method  of  scientific 
mastery  of  fields  of  endeavor,  and  so  of  the 
hope  of  mighty  achievements  for  the  better- 
ment of  humanity ;  and  in  the  bringing  in  of 
the  scientific  spirit  itself,  with  its  demand  in 
this  whole  most  impressive  field  of  modern 
thought  for  a  fundamental  moral  quality  — 
that  of  utter  open-minded  honesty.  In  all 
this,  Christianity  can  earnestly  rejoice ;   for  it 


CHRISTIANITY  AS  A  WORLD  RELIGION    207 

would  be  difficult  to  find  anywhere  in  history 
so  close  a  parallel  to  the  modern  demand 
for  the  scientific  spirit  as  in  Jesus'  persistent 
call  to  absolute  inner  integrity  of  life.  The 
passion  for  reality  is  indubitably  his.  And 
Christianity  welcomes  the  light  modern  science 
is  throwing  upon  the  laws  of  nature  and  of 
human  life,  as  light  upon  the  methods  and 
purposes  of  the  Creator,  and  as  pointing  to 
the  ways  in  which  men  may  intelligently  and 
unselfishly  cooperate  with  God  in  his  all- 
embracing  plans  for  men. 

In  the  second  place,  although  Christianity  as 
an  historical  religion  has  naturally  been  sensi- 
tive to  the  movements  of  historical  criticism, 
and  in  some  of  its  representatives  has  often 
protested  against  the  whole  attempt  thus  to 
scrutinize  sources  and  origins  ;  still  its  clearest- 
sighted  leaders  have  certainly  now  learned 
that  the  movement  that  at  first  sight  seemed 
so  threatening,  has  in  the  end  greatly  helped 
it  to  use  its  own  Scriptures  more  intelligently, 
to  make  an  indispensable  discrimination  be- 
tween the  temporary  and  the  permanent,  and 
so  saved  it  from  forcing  incongruities  of 
various  kinds  on  modern  trained  minds. 
Seventy-five  years  of  the  most  searching 
criticism,  too,   have  made  it  clear  that  the 


2o8  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

life  of  Jesus  cannot  be  taken  away  from  the 
world,  nor  its  vital  significance  diminished. 
A  single  indication  of  this  can  be  found  in 
Professor  Loof's  recent  book,  What  is  the 
Truth  about  Jesus  Christ?  Christianity  is 
able,  thus,  both  to  meet  the  tests  of  historical 
criticism,  and  to  use  to  its  own  great  ad- 
vantage all  its  justified  methods.  In  so 
doing.  It  only  makes  more  possible  the  fulfil- 
ment of  its  mission  as  a  religion  for  all  men 
of  all  races  and  for  all  time. 

It  needs  even  less  argument  to  show  that 
Christianity  can  meet  the  test  of  the  social 
consciousness  of  our  time.  Jesus'  constant 
sense  of  the  priceless  value  and  sacredness  of 
the  Individual  person,  and  his  insistence 
upon  an  active  ministering  self-giving  love, 
that  applies  the  test  of  service  to  all  Indi- 
viduals and  societies  and  institutions.  Indicate 
rather  the  standards  and  ideals  which  the 
social  consciousness  itself  Is  trying  to  express. 
The  social  consciousness,  and  the  true  de- 
mocracy to  which  it  looks,  are  of  the  very 
essence  of  the  spirit  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus. 

Nor  Is  It  true  of  Christianity  that  It  simply 
meets  the  tests  the  modern  age  brings  to  It. 
Rather,  as  has  been  already  suggested,  In  Its 
emphasis  on  the  humble  open-minded  spirit; 


CHRISTIANITY  AS  A  WORLD  RELIGION    209 

in  its  passion  for  reality,  so  far  as  it  is  true 
to  the  spirit  of  Jesus ;  in  its  faith  in  God  as  a 
faithful  Creator  revealing  his  will  in  the  laws 
of  nature  and  in  the  inner  laws  of  man's 
being ;  in  its  insistence  on  freedom  of  con- 
science ;  and  in  its  demand  for  self-forgetting 
service  ;  —  in  all  this,  it  is  not  only  thoroughly 
akin  to  all  the  best  in  modern  civilization, 
but  it  furnishes  spiritual  foundations  for  its 
structure,  motives  for  its  rational  develop- 
ment, ideals  and  standards  to  which  it  must 
conform.  The  real  roots  of  the  best  in 
Western  civilization  are  Christian.  This  is 
what  is  really  offered  Japan  for  the  spiritual 
basis  of  its  civilization. 

Now  Christianity  is  all  the  better  able  to 
furnish  this  needed  spiritual  basis  for  civili- 
zation in  the  Orient,  and  so  to  meet  what 
Japan  is  seeking,  because  its  fundamental 
spirit  really  demands  such  a  presentation  of 
Christianity  as  shall  call  out  the  freedom  and 
initiative  of  those  to  whom  it  goes,  as  shall 
reverently  respect  and  cherish  the  best  in 
them,  and  as  shall  thus  not  simply  prescribe 
for  the  Orient  all  the  Occidental  ways  of 
stating  and  interpreting  Christianity.  A 
careful  unhackneyed  study  of  the  teaching 
of  Jesus  will  show  that  he  was  above  all  con- 


2IO  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

cerned  to  call  out  in  men  insight  and  decision 
that  were  truly  their  own.  He  makes  con- 
stantly the  inner  appeal  to  reason  and  con- 
science. He  so  respects  men's  wills  and  per- 
sons that  he  will  not  simply  dominate  them, 
and  he  knows  that  nothing  moral  would  be 
really  accomplished  if  he  did.  He  still  stands 
at  the  door  of  men's  hearts  and  knocks ;  he 
will  not  force  the  door.  We  cannot  be  true 
to  his  spirit,  and  feel  that  it  is  for  us  simply 
to  prescribe  according  to  Western  models,  all 
the  forms  and  ways  of  Japan's  reaction  on 
the  facts  of  historical  Christianity.  Do  moral 
initiative  and  freedom  of  conscience  mean  so 
little  to  us  ? 

Doubtless  the  West  in  its  own  experiences 
with  Christianity  has  achieved  much  in  its 
interpretations  of  the  Christian  religion  that 
may  prove  of  permanent  worth  for  all  men. 
But  in  the  course  of  Christian  history  there 
have  been  doctrinal  changes  too  profound  to 
allow  us  to  assume  that  it  remains  for  the 
Orient  simply  to  take  over  full-fledged  any 
one  of  the  Western  interpretations  of  Chris- 
tianity. Rather  are  the  facts  of  Christ  and 
of  historical  Christianity  so  great  that  they 
need  for  their  full  evaluation  the  honest  re- 
actions of  all  races.     In  such  a  humble,  open- 


CHRISTIANITY  AS  A  WORLD  RELIGION    211 

minded,  but  utterly  honest,  reaction  on  the 
facts  of  historical  Christianity,  and  in  the 
resulting  interpretation  of  its  own  of  Chris- 
tianity —  profiting  by  all  that  other  men  have 
felt  that  they  have  found  —  Japan  could 
hardly  fail  to  find  a  satisfying  spiritual  basis 
for  its  individual  and  national  life,  and  at 
the  same  time  have  no  mere  imitation  of  the 
religious  experience  of  other  peoples.  It 
would  both  preserve  its  own  best,  and  be 
perfectly  loyal  to  Christ,  and  it  would  have 
chosen  the  best  in  religion  that  the  world  has 
to  offer. 

The  question  of  Christianity  as  a  world- 
religion  not  only  arises  naturally  in  Chris- 
tianity's missionary  self-extension  into  the 
Orient,  but  is  also  pressed  upon  all  thoughtful 
men  anew  in  the  world-crisis  brought  on  by 
the  European  War.  Is  Christianity  to  prove 
able  to  inspire  a  new,  a  better,  a  more  Chris- 
tian civilization  than  the  world  has  yet  seen, 
even  within  what  is  called  Christendom  ? 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  QUESTION  OF  CHRISTIANITY  AS  A 
WORLD  RELIGION  II:  CITIZENS  OF  A 
NEW  CIVILIZATION 

The  present  critical  times  remind  one  in- 
stinctively of  Christ's  words  :  "Take  ye  heed 
to  yourselves  " ;  for  those  words  were  spoken 
at  a  time  of  world  crisis,  when  a  new  civi- 
lization was  dawning,  with  new  ideals  and 
standards  rooting  in  Christ's  revolutionary 
sense  of  the  value  of  every  man.  The  coun- 
sel therefore  was  no  crass  exhortation  to 
"look  out  for  number  one,"  but  rather: 
Be  sure  that  you  possess  the  qualities  that  are 
needed  in  the  new  civilization,  the  qualities 
which  will  help  to  bring  on  that  new  civiliza- 
tion apace.  "Take  ye  heed  to  yourselves," 
therefore.  Don't  mistake  the  seriousness 
of  the  crisis.  Don't  sell  out  to  the  old  forces. 
Don't  just  let  things  drift.  Don't  lose  faith 
in  the  world's  better  possibilities.  Be  citi- 
zens of  a  new  civilization. 

In  like  manner,  we  can  hardly  mistake  the 
conviction  that  we  too  are  now  living  at  a 

212 


CITIZENS  OF  A  NEW   CIVILIZATION    213 

world  crisis,  in  the  midst  of  a  war  incom- 
parably the  most  terrible  the  world  has  ever 
seen,  when  great  changes  impend.  A  trained 
American  historical  scholar  wrote  me  re- 
cently :  ''All  my  historical  study  convinces 
me  that  we  are  living  through  one  of  the 
crucially  decisive  ages  in  world  history,  and 
that  old  things  are  passing  away  and  all 
things  are  becoming  new."  To  like  effect 
the  distinguished  Italian  historian  Ferrero 
testifies  to  the  presence  of  "one  of  those  grand 
crises  in  history  which  from  time  to  time 
devastate  a  part  of  the  world  and  modify  the 
march  of  civilization ;  one  of  those  crises 
which  cut  with  one  violent  blow  the  Gor- 
dian  knot  of  difficulties  that  have  been  accu- 
mulating little  by  little  for  generations,  and 
that  have  become  otherwise  insoluble  by 
their  complexity." 

Now,  if  anything  like  this  be  true^^  it 
mightily  concerns  all  who  have  any  care  for 
humanity,  any  care  for  a  better  civilization, 
any  care  for  some  true  realization  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God  on  earth,  that,  so  far  as  in 
them  lies,  the  monstrous  and  heart-breaking 
price  of  this  scientifically  demoniacal  war 
shall  not  have  been  paid  in  vain.  We  have 
no  right  to  become  calloused  to  the  ugliness 


214  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

and  frightfulness  of  this  worst  of  wars,  nor 
to  the  immeasurable  toll  it  is  demanding, 
in  physical  suffering  and  mental  anguish  on 
the  part  of  both  combatants  and  non-com- 
batants —  women  and  little  children ;  in  the 
dire  maiming  of  body  and  mind  for  untold 
thousands  —  50,000  French  soldiers,  for 
example,  blinded  for  life ;  in  the  blotting  out 
of  fathers  and  husbands  and  sons,  until  one 
becomes  sick  in  the  reckoning ;  —  nor  this 
alone,  but  also  —  in  the  striking  down  of 
divinely  endowed  leaders  in  scientific  inves- 
tigation, in  art  and  music  and  poetry,  in 
every  field  of  human  endeavor  and  progress ; 
in  the  slaughter  of  the  choicest  youth  of  all 
the  belligerent  nations,  and  of  the  small 
picked  number  of  university  trained  men, 
from  whom  the  leaders  of  the  nations  natu- 
rally come  (11,000  such  men  have  gone  out 
from  Oxford  alone) ;  in  the  brutalizing  of 
men  through  the  unexampled  ferocity  of  the 
fighting ;  in  the  breaking  down  of  national 
morals  and  international  ideals;  in  the  de- 
liberate nursing  of  national  suspicions  and 
hatreds  not  to  be  effaced  in  a  generation. 

If  a  man  estimates  that  toll,  and  still 
thinks  that  it  is  to  be  taken  as  a  matter  of 
course  that  a  like  war  should  soon  recur,  and 


CITIZENS   OF   A  NEW   CIVILIZATION     215 

that  its  sole  or  chief  lesson  for  a  nation  is  the 
building  up  of  huge  armaments,  he  thereby 
proclaims  himself  an  enemy  of  mankind, 
however  patriotic  be  the  words  in  which  he 
veils  his  thought.  For  the  simple  fact  is, 
that  our  generation  must  count  itself  bank- 
rupt in  both  brains  and  morals,  if  it  do  not 
succeed  in  finding  some  better  way  to  the 
settlement  of  questions  between  nations  than 
by  such  a  world-desolating  war  as  that 
through  which  Europe  is  now  passing.  It  is 
the  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  the  deification  of 
force. 

Make  real  to  yourselves  a  single  count  in 
the  indictment  of  this  war  —  the  fearful 
slaughter  of  the  choicest  trained  youth. 
Just  because  of  this,  the  most  threatening 
factor  in  the  situation  after  the  war  is,  that 
the  direction  of  the  nations  is  likely  to  re- 
main so  largely  in  the  hands  of  comparatively 
old  men,  saturated  with  old  notions,  not 
ashamed  to  praise  and  glorify  war,  without 
large  vision,  and  incapable  of  daring  and 
genuinely  humane  ideals,  who  will  assume 
that  things  must  go  on  in  much  the  same 
damning  way,  and  will  be  contented  to  have 
it  so.  It  was  General  Gordon  who  said : 
^'England  was  never  made  by  her  Statesmen. 


2i6  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

England  was  made  by  her  Adventurers." 
And  upon  this  text  one  has  written  : 

They  sit  at  home  and  they  dream  and  dally, 

Raking  the  embers  of  long-dead  years  — 
But  ye  go  down  to  the  haunted  Valley, 

Light-hearted  pioneers. 
They  have  forgotten  they  ever  were  young, 

They  hear  your  songs  as  an  unknown  tongue,  .  .  . 
But  the  Flame  of  God  through  your  spirit  stirs, 

Adventurers  —  O  Adventurers  ! 

It  is  a  tragic  thing  that  a  continent's  young 
leaders  should  be  blotted  out.  For  youth 
has  sensitiveness  and  imagination  and  vision 
and  faith  and  initiative  and  dynamic.  And 
the  world  never  needed  these  qualities  so 
much  as  it  needs  them  now.  One  can  hardly 
help,  therefore,  making  especial  appeal,  to- 
day, to  youth,  to  trained  youth,  to  American 
youth.  For  this  undreamed-of  slaughter  of 
the  youthful  leaders  of  Europe  lays  on  Amer- 
ican youth  a  double  load  of  responsibility. 

I 

Faith    in    the    Possibilities    of    a    New 
Civilization 

And  my  first  appeal  to  American  youth  is 
that  they  exercise  the  right  of  youth,  and 
with  all  their  souls  believe  in  the  possibilities 


CITIZENS   OF   A   NEW   CIVILIZATION     217 

of  a  new  civilization,  and  throw  their  whole 
selves  into  the  struggle  for  its  on-coming. 
The  one  thing  that  may  not  be  forgiven  to 
youth  is  cynicism  and  standpattism.  Are 
you  to  forget  that  the  very  meaning  of  the 
progress  of  civilization  has  been  the  replac- 
ing of  the  rule  of  violence  by  the  reign  of 
law  ?  Because  delicate  questions  of  reason 
and  justice  cannot  conceivably  be  settled  by 
such  an  arbiter  as  force.  And  are  you  to 
assume  that  the  race's  ideal  triumphs  along 
this  line  lie  all  in  the  past  ^  As  American 
youth  are  you  to  be  satisfied,  that  your  nation 
should  enormously  profit  financially  by  this 
brutalizing  war,  and  count  its  further  duty 
done  by  military  preparedness  of  the  Euro- 
pean sort  ?  Is  this  titanic  conflict  —  a  single 
incident  of  which  two  years  ago  would  have 
sent  a  thrill  of  horror  through  the  whole 
world  —  to  mean  no  more  than  that  for  the 
life  of  America  ?  And  are  you  contented 
that  it  should  be  so  ?  Is  this  world  crisis 
to  bring  no  deep  heart-searching  to  America 
as  well  as  to  Europe  ^ 

The  disheartening  thing  to  the  lover  of 
humanity  in  America  just  now  is,  that  our 
vociferous  advocates  of  preparedness,  our 
Navy  and  Security  Leagues,  are  content  by 


2l8  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

every  device  to  cultivate  a  militaristic  hys- 
teria, but  give  no  evidence  of  world  vision, 
no  evidence  of  seeing  the  possibility  of  a  new 
civilization,  or  of  caring  for  it.  This  is  what 
so  stirs  any  rational  pacifist,  as  The  New 
Republic  says  : 

What  the  pacifist  sees  is  not  a  table  of  figures  show- 
ing the  miHtary  weakness  of  America.  He  sees  a  world 
in  ruins,  brought  to  its  ruin  by  the  very  same  kind  of 
talk  and  calculation  now  being  used  so  glibly  by  the 
advocates  of  preparedness.  He  sees  that  Europe 
thought  in  terms  of  rights,  honor,  armament,  expansion, 
and  the  result  horrifies  him.  He  wishes  to  know 
whether  we  too  are  doomed  to  enter  that  same  deadly 
circle  of  conscription,  national  assertion,  diplomatic 
intrigue  for  which  Europe  is  tortured.  He  says  that 
the  preparedness  agitation  is  an  old  and  bloody  story, 
a  hideous  repetition  of  the  very  thing  which  prepared 
Europe  for  disaster.  That  is  what  inspires  the  pacifist, 
and  that  is  why  sneers  leave  him  unmoved.  He  feels 
that  there  has  got  to  be  a  new  deal  in  the  world,  and  it 
terrifies  him  to  think  that  among  those  who  are  loudest 
for  armament  there  is  no  hint  of  a  better  vision. 

Perhaps  no  better  vision  is  possible,  but  the  pacifist 
is  not  yet  ready  to  admit  that  counsel  of  despair. 
What  makes  the  whole  preparedness  movement  hateful 
to  him  is  that  it  has  come  to  scorn  a  better  vision.  That 
Is  what  makes  the  talk  cold  and  alien  to  him.  If  he 
felt  that  American  militarists  were  really  rebellious 
against  the  system  which  has  made  this  war,  if  he  felt 
some  response  in  them  to  the  need  of  a  more  coopera- 


CITIZENS   OF   A   NEW   CIVILIZATION     219 

tive  world,  if  he  felt  that  in  their  hearts  they  cared 
above  all  other  things  for  a  different  order  among  na- 
tions, his  antagonism  would  be  infinitely  reduced. 

But  we  may  well  hope  that  upon  the 
sober  heart  of  common  humanity,  the  lessons 
of  this  terribly  desolating  war  are  not 
to  be  lost ;  that  its  satanic  ugliness  and 
frightfulness,  and  its  essential  futility  as 
well,  will  have  been  so  unmistakably  dis- 
closed that  no  nation  can  rush  lightheartedly 
into  It  again  for  selfish  aggression ;  that  the 
belligerents  themselves  will  become  so  deathly 
sick  of  war  that  they  will  be  planning  at 
least  for  a  far  more  permanent  peace,  and 
for  the  coming  of  a  civilization  worthy  of 
such  untold  sacrifices  as  have  been  made. 

Even  the  probable  inconclusiveness  of  the 
struggle  may  be  a  ground  of  hope,  as  Mr. 
Wells  argues  : 

I  believe  that  this  war  is  going  to  end,  not  in  the 
complete  smashing  up  and  subjugation  of  either  side, 
but  in  a  general  exhaustion  that  will  make  the  recru- 
descence of  the  war  still  possible,  but  very  terrifying. 
The  thought  of  war  will  sit  like  a  giant  over  all  human 
affairs  for  the  next  two  decades.  It  will  say  to  us  all : 
"Get  your  houses  in  order.  If  you  squabble  among 
yourselves,  waste  time,  litigate,  muddle,  snatch  profits 
and  shirk  obligations,  I  will  certainly  come  again.  I 
have  taken  all  your  men  between  eighteen  and  fifty. 


220  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

and  killed  and  maimed  such  as  I  pleased  —  millions 
of  them.  I  have  wasted  your  substance  contemptu- 
ously. Now  you  have  multitudes  of  male  children 
between  the  ages  of  nine  and  nineteen  running  about 
among  you,  delightful  and  beloved  boys.  And  behind 
them  come  millions  of  delightful  babies.  Of  these  I 
have  scarcely  smashed  and  starved  a  paltry  hundred 
thousand  perhaps.  But  go  on  muddling,  each  for 
himself  and  his  parish  and  his  family,  and  none  for  all 
the  world,  go  on  in  the  old  way,  stick  to  your  rights, 
stick  to  your  claims,  each  one  of  you,  make  no  conces- 
sions and  no  sacrifices,  obstruct,  waste,  squabble,  and 
presently  I  will  come  back  again  and  take  all  that  fresh 
harvest  of  life  —  all  those  millions  that  are  now  sweet 
children  and  dear  little  boys  and  youths  —  and  I  will 
squeeze  it  into  red  jam  between  my  hands,  and  mix 
it  with  the  mud  of  trenches  and  feast  on  it  before  your 
eyes,  even  more  damnably  than  I  have  done  with  your 
grown-up  sons  and  young  men.  And  I  have  taken  most 
of  your  superfluities  already ;  next  time  I  will  take  your 
barest  necessities."  So  —  war;  and  in  these  days  of 
universal  education  the  great  mass  of  people  will  under- 
stand plainly  now  that  that  is  his  message  and  intention. 
Men  who  cannot  be  swayed  by  the  love  of  order  and 
creation  may  be  swayed  by  the  thought  of  death  and 
destruction. 

To  defeat,  then,  this  giant's  threat,  and 
for  the  sake  of  a  new  and  better  civilization, 
we  are  to  take  heed  to  ourselves,  to  discern 
the  times,  to  get  out  of  our  selfish  absorptions 
—  individual,   community,  or  national.     We 


CITIZENS   OF   A  NEW   CIVILIZATION     221 

are  to  think  discriminatingly,  and  to  be 
ashamed  not  to  think  in  world  terms,  in 
terms  of  humanity.  For  if  the  world  is  not 
to  lose  this  priceless  opportunity  for  a  great 
forward  step  in  civilization,  it  will  need  every 
ounce  of  help  from  every  unselfish  man  and 
woman,  especially  in  America.  For  the 
energy  and  will  of  Europe  will  have  been 
disastrously  sapped. 

II 

The    Special    Obligations    Now    Resting 
UPON  America  and  America's  Youth 

And  how  can  the  lover  of  America  help 
wishing  that  she  may  do  something  worthy 
of  herself  in  this  world  crisis,  —  may  fully 
recognize  the  special  obligations  now  rest- 
ing upon  America  and  America's  youth  ? 
For  this  war  already  involves  the  larger 
part  of  the  earth's  surface  and  America 
cannot  help  being  mightily  concerned  in  the 
outcome.  She  is  the  chief  neutral.  She 
is  the  chief  and  oldest  republic,  holding  in 
peculiar  degree  the  trust  of  the  democratic 
ideal  and  trend.  Almost  alone  among  the 
nations  she  has  been  standing  in  some  degree 
at  least  for  the  maintenance  of  international 


222  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

law.  She  is  not  immediately  involved  m 
Europe's  conflicting  interests,  and  so  can 
view  them  with  some  measure  of  dispassion- 
ateness. The  probably  rather  indecisive  end- 
ing of  the  war  would  give  her  a  special  oppor- 
tunity to  insure  a  more  cooperative  and  better 
world.  And  is  it  not  certain  that  we  cannot 
longer  stand  aloof  from  the  world's  problems  ? 
For  our  own  life,  and  for  the  life  of  the 
world,  we  must  join  with  other  nations  in 
seeking  with  all  possible  energy  a  great 
constructive  issue  out  of  the  present  col- 
lapse of  civilization.  No  mere  negation,  or 
evasion,  or  runaway  attitude  will  suffice. 

At  one  point  in  particular,  America  has 
a  great  and  unmistakable  obligation  in  this 
devastating  war.  Americans  can  at  least 
share  generously  by  their  gifts  in  the  relief 
of  the  suffering  and  starving,  and  in  the  later 
reconstruction  of  European  life.  Look  at 
the  facts  for  a  moment  as  set  forth  by  the 
Federal  Council  of  Churches  :  three  million 
destitute  people  in  Belgium ;  two  millions 
in  northern  France ;  five  millions  in  Servia 
"deprived  of  their  living  and  of  a  chance  to 
make  it";  in  Poland  "eleven  millions  of 
homeless  wandering  peasants,  mostly  women 
and  children";    a  million  Armenian  refugees 


CITIZENS   OF   A  NEW   CIVILIZATION     223 

—  the  wreck  of  a  whole  nation.  Facts  like 
these  plainly  call  for  millions  of  dollars  where 
thousands  have  been  given.  So  far  Amer- 
ica, though  enormously  profiting  at  certain 
points  by  the  war,  has  given  only  seven  cents 
per  capita  to  Belgian  relief,  for  example, 
while  New  Zealand,  besides  bearing  its  own 
war  burdens,  has  given  a  dollar  and  a  quarter 
per  capita.  It  is  obvious  that  America  has 
by  no  means  yet  measured  up  to  her  obliga- 
tion here.  Ambassador  Morgenthau  sug- 
gests five  hundred  millions  as  not  more  than 
could  reasonably  be  expected  from  America. 
For  our  own  life's  sake  we  need  to  give 
greatly.  Much  of  the  enormous  war  profits 
ought  to  go  to  this  work  of  relief  and  recon- 
struction. 

And  when  we  are  thinking  of  the  larger 
interests  of  the  world  and  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God,  we  cannot  doubt  that  trained  American 
youth  must  gird  themselves  to  do  what  in 
them  lies  to  make  good  the  loss  of  the  trained 
youth  of  the  European  nations. 

Because,  then,  of  these  special  obligations 
upon  America  and  America's  youth,  once 
more  they  are  to  be  urged,  to  be  prepared 
with  an  adequate  preparedness  for  a  new 
age,  to  be  citizens  of  the  new  dawning  civi- 


224  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

lization.  It  mightily  concerns  a  man  that 
he  should  ask  himself:  Am  I  going  to  be 
able  to  measure  up  to  the  demands  of  the 
new  age  ?  Under  the  law  of  moral  conse- 
quences —  of  reaping  what  I  am  sowing, 
shall  I  be  ready  to  take  my  part  in  the  new 
civilization  ?  Shall  I  be  a  help  or  a  load  ? 
Have  I  the  qualities  of  a  citizen  of  the  new 
civilization  ? 

Ill 

The   Demands   of  the   New  Civilization 

Can  we  anticipate  in  some  measure  the 
demands  of  this  new  civilization  and  so  learn 
the  great  lessons  that  God  would  teach  us 
by  this  world-devastating  war  ? 

I.  In  the  first  place,  the  new  age,  we 
cannot  doubt,  will  have  a  new  sense  of  the 
inescapable  grip  of  the  laws  of  God  in  the 
life  of  nations  as  well  as  of  individuals.  Be 
not  deceived :  God  is  not  mocked :  for 
whatsoever  man  or  nation  soweth,  that  shall 
man  or  nation  also  reap.  To  this  all  the 
belligerent  nations  bear  witness,  whether 
they  will  or  no.  This  war  has  demonstrated 
that  a  nation  cannot  break  its  solemnly 
plighted  word  and  not  reap  the  reward  of 


CITIZENS   OF   A  NEW   CIVILIZATION     225 

universal  distrust ;  that  it  cannot  sow  fright- 
fulness  and  not  reap  a  growing  barbarism; 
that  it  cannot  sow  the  seed  of  an  absolute 
national  selfishness  and  not  reap  the  harvest 
of  the  enmity  of  the  nations.  The  two 
greatest  glories  of  the  war,  the  splendid  way 
in  which  the  colonies  of  Great  Britain  — 
especially  South  Africa  —  have  come  to  the 
aid  of  the  mother  country,  and  the  unshaken 
loyalty  of  Germany's  working  classes  to  the 
government,  —  both  alike  go  back  to  a  fairly 
Christian  regard  for  fairness  and  justice. 
Because  on  the  whole  England  has  been  just 
and  tolerant  and  generous  in  her  dealing  with 
her  colonies ;  because  the  German  govern- 
ment had  given  unmistakable  evidence  that 
it  had  been  studying  the  needs  of  the  laboring 
classes  and  paternally  caring  for  them  (even 
though  absolutism  was  served  thereby),  these 
results  could  be.  Both  nations  were  reaping 
what  they  had  sown. 

In  like  manner,  Germany's  two  greatest 
peaceful  triumphs,  —  the  large  measure  of 
scientific  leadership  which  was  hers,  and  the 
enormous  growth  of  her  commerce,  —  both 
go  back  in  great  degree  to  the  painstaking 
practice  of  certain  moral  qualities,  —  the 
patient  willingness  open-mindedly  to  master 


226  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

the  facts,  to  learn  the  languages  of  the 
peoples  whom  they  would  serve,  and  to  ad- 
just to  their  needs  and  desires.  This  is  not 
the  entire  explanation.  There  have  been 
less  noble  reasons  for  Germany's  commercial 
expansion  that  are  now  reacting  against 
her ;  but  fundamental  moral  laws  have  been 
at  work  along  both  lines.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  lack  of  the  scientific  spirit  in  her 
historians  under  the  pressure  of  Prussia  and 
the  HohenzoUern  dynasty,  through  the  forced 
education  of  the  last  fifty  years,  has  afi'ected 
disastrously  the  whole  spirit  of  her  people 
and  led  to  the  virtual  repudiation  of  much 
of  what  is  most  glorious  in  her  heritage.  It 
is  a  German,  Dr.  Edward  Stilgebauer,  who 
says  in  substance,  that  ^'it  is  in  the  deaden- 
ing grip  of  a  mechanism  of  Prussian  make, 
that  German  intellect,  and  mind,  and  indi- 
vidualism, and  love  of  freedom,  and  criticism, 
all  treasures  of  which  the  closing  eighteenth 
century  have  been  so  proud,  are  now  pining 
away.  A  nation  which  has  let  go  these 
gifts  becomes  the  easy  prey  of  unscrupulous 
rulers."  The  taking  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine, 
too,  by  Germany,  after  the  Franco-Prussian 
war,  seemed  no  doubt  an  advantageous  thing 
to  do,  but,  added  to  the  enormous  indemnity 


CITIZENS    OF   A   NEW   CIVILIZATION     227 

demanded  from  France,  it  gave  to  France 
such  a  bitter  rankling  sense  of  injustice  as 
to  make  those  provinces  a  thorn  in  the  side 
of  Germany,  a  source  of  constant  weakness, 
and  a  perpetual  root  of  national  dissension. 

On  the  side  of  the  Allies,  that  England 
has  not  been  able  to  count  upon  her  working 
classes  as  Germany  has  upon  hers,  it  must 
be  recognized,  is  the  natural  fruit  of  long 
neglect,  and  of  lack  of  a  just  and  comprehen- 
sive national  policy  for  her  laboring  men. 
So,  too,  so  friendly  a  critic  of  England  as 
The  Nation  feels  that  it  must  say : 

It  is  a  severe  indictment  of  British  policy  in  Ireland 
that  ever  since  Cromwell's  day  there  have  been  bands 
of  Irishmen  ready  to  risk  all  in  striking  at  England. 
This  inveterate  and  inherited  national  hatred,  this 
settled  and  sullen  distrust,  this  smouldering  desire  for 
wild  and  blind  vengeance,  are  the  bitter  fruit  of  mis- 
taken statesmanship,  persisting  through  the  centuries. 

That  almost  alone  among  the  belligerents, 
and  at  a  time  of  supreme  national  peril, 
England  has  been  able  to  do  so  little  to 
restrict  its  liquor  traffic,  also  is  again  the 
legitimate  result  of  great  abuses  long  con- 
tinued. That  France  has  been  able  to  count 
upon  the  devoted  loyalty  of  her  colored  troops, 
even  of  her  pure  blacks,   is   directly  due  to 


228  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

such  considerate  and  friendly  treatment  as 
no  other  nation  has  equalled.  That  France, 
too,  has  grown  so  steadily  in  the  esteem  of 
the  world  during  the  war,  is  clearly  due,  as 
Ferrero  contends,  not  to  merely  quantita- 
tive elements  that  statistics  could  measure, 
but  to  an  inner  spirit,  "a  feeling  of  right,  of 
honor,  and  of  justice,"  which  the  world 
hardly  believed  her  to  possess,  but  which, 
"in  a  great  historical  crisis,  formed  a  neces- 
sary element  of  equilibrium  and  of  safety." 

And  that  this  war  could  come  at  all  is 
evidence  that  the  nations  as  a  whole  had 
not  sown  peace.  They  had  not  steadily  and 
honestly  and  earnestly  sought  friendly  rela- 
tions, nor  been  willing  to  fulfill  the  conditions 
that  make  such  friendly  relations  possible. 

These  are  a  few  illustrations  which  tend 
to  show  that  this  war  has  been  a  daily  demon- 
stration, that  nations  as  well  as  individuals 
may  not  escape  the  grip  of  the  laws  of  God, 
but  reap  what  they  sow  for  good  and  for  ill. 
That  deep  conviction  should  first  of  all 
characterize  the  new  civilization  that  is  to 
be.  For  no  small  part  of  the  horror  of  the 
present  war  and  its  most  threatening  danger 
have  grown  out  of  the  utterly  pagan  theory 
that   nations   were   above   morality   and   not 


CITIZENS   OF   A   NEW   CIVILIZATION     229 

responsible  to  God.  The  new  civilization 
we  may  trust,  therefore,  will  be  a  humbled 
and  repentant  civilization. 

2.  Because  it  has  a  new  sense  of  the  grip 
of  the  laws  of  God  in  the  life  of  nations,  the 
new  age  will  demand  in  the  second  place 
that  there  is  just  one  road  to  national  great- 
ness, —  stern  self-discipline  in  obedience  to 
those  laws,  leading  to  a  reinvigoration  of 
the  life  of  the  nations  in  its  entire  range, 
physical,  political,  economic,  intellectual, 
moral,  and  religious.  For  these  ends  we  are 
to  search  our  hearts  here  in  America  and  to 
repent  of  our  sins.  Less  than  that  is  no  true 
preparedness  for  the  new  age. 

It  is  not  creditable  to  America,  in  the 
first  place,  that  degenerative  diseases  are 
sapping  her  life  to  a  degree  not  true  of  the 
Scandinavian  countries  or  even  of  England. 
Neither  public  nor  private  hygiene  has 
done  for  us  yet  anything  like  what  they  may 
do.  No  spasmodic  training  in  a  few  military 
camps  will  meet  the  physical  need  of  the 
nation.  It  goes  back  to  individual  and  com- 
munity ideals,  to  many-sided  self-control, 
to  a  passion  for  physical  fitness  and  surplus 
nervous  energy,  and  —  it  may  not  be  for- 
gotten —  to  just  and  humane  economic  con- 


230  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

ditions,  not  less.     Are  we  willing  to  pay  this 
price  of  national  physical  fitness  ? 

This  in  turn  demands  a  political  reinvigo- 
ration,  for  failure  here  vitiates  seeming  suc- 
cess elsewhere.  It  is  not  a  pleasing  reflec- 
tion that  in  recent  years  civil  service  reform 
in  America  has  pretty  steadily  lost  ground. 
Are  you  satisfied  that  your  nation's  political 
leaders  of  both  parties  should  appropriate 
two  hundred  and  forty  millions  for  increased 
armaments,  and  look  not  one  pace  beyond, 
—  take  no  single  step  to  eliminate  the  mil- 
lions of  waste  and  graft  In  present  army  and 
navy  conditions  and  In  the  pork-laden  river 
and  harbor  and  public  buildings  bills,  and 
have  no  time  or  heart  for  social  measures 
looking  to  an  honester  and  juster  and  fairer 
America  ?  Is  there  any  evidence  here  that 
we  are  adequately  facing  a  national  crisis  ? 
"What  has  happened,"  says  one  of  America's 
most  far-sighted  editors,  "to  almost  all  the 
recent  attempts  at  social  and  political  re- 
construction both  in  state  and  nation,"  is 
this  :  "They  are  vitiated  In  practice  either 
by  crude  administrative  arrangements  or  by 
actual  administrative  lethargy  or  disloyalty." 
"This  Is  the  profoundly  and  perennially  dis- 
couraging aspect  of  American  politics.     Amer- 


CITIZENS    OF   A   NEW   CIVILIZATION     231 

leans  fight  a  series  of  battles  over  candidates 
and  policies  ;  they  celebrate  their  victories 
and  mourn  over  their  defeats ;  but  they 
never  sufficiently  realize  that  the  battles  are 
shams,  and  that  the  real  and  the  only  vic- 
tors are  the  local  politicians  of  both  parties." 
We  are  simply  not  holding  our  political  rep- 
resentatives to  any  decent  account.  Can 
that  result  be  regarded  as  any  true  prepar- 
edness of  America  for  a  new  age  with  new 
standards  .^ 

Even  from  the  single  standpoint  of  national 
defense  are  we  fulfilling  steadily,  faithfully, 
thoughtfully,  the  conditions  upon  which  we 
can  count  upon  a  united  and  devoted  people  ? 
Is  America  giving  her  less  favored  classes 
great  and  constant  reason  to  love  her,  and  so 
calling  out  their  undying  devotion  ?  Can  this 
be  true  when  fifty-one  per  cent  of  the  fami- 
lies of  America  have  an  annual  income  of  less 
than  eight  hundred  dollars  ?  Let  us  be  cer- 
tain that  we  insure  a  united  and  devoted 
people,  only  when  we  lay  deep  and  strong  the 
foundations  of  economic  and  social  justice  for 
all  classes.  In  copying  Germany's  elaborate 
military  plans,  let  us  be  sure  that  we  do  not 
fail  to  learn  from  her  a  more  important  element 
of  national  strength.     As  Dr.  Devine  says  : 


232  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

Her  political  institutions  were  inferior  to  those  of 
England,  and  her  culture  more  primitive  than  that  of 
France,  but  she  had  advanced  further  than  either  in  that 
process  of  social  integration  which  made  every  German 
feel  that  he  was  an  integral  part  of  the  nation,  that  his 
affairs  were  the  continuing  concern  of  the  body  politic. 

But  if  America  is  to  keep  her  democracy, 
she  needs  a  radically  different  kind  of  army 
from  that  ordinarily  conceived.  We  need 
not  deny  the  necessity  of  an  army  of  reason- 
able proportions,  but  we  must  keep  our  hatred 
of  militarism,  and  our  determination  not  to  be 
stampeded  into  militarism  of  the  European 
sort.  Perhaps  no  one  has  better  stated  the 
ideal  of  such  a  new  kind  of  army  than  Presi- 
dent James  A.  B.  Scherer,  in  his  book  on 
'^The  Moral  Equivalent  of  War,"  and  Mr. 
Harry  G.  Traver  of  the  Society  of  Construc- 
tive Defense.  Dr.  Scherer  thus  states  his 
plan : 

I  believe  in  a  working  army.  Make  the  present 
Army  and  Navy  efficient,  and  then  take  a  leaf  from  the 
wise  little  book  of  economical  Switzerland.  Under  the 
civil  control  of  the  Government  why  should  we  not 
organize  upon  the  slopes  of  our  mountains,  in  the  wastes 
of  the  desert,  and  along  the  flood-threatened  valleys 
great  camps  of  a  constructive  army  of  peace,  trained  to 
the  conservation  of  resources,  inured  to  wholesome 
hardship,  and  drilled  also  sufficiently  in  military  tactics, 


CITIZENS   OF   A  NEW   CIVILIZATION     233 

so  that  they  would  find  a  noble  moral  substitute  for 
war  in  saving  life  and  husbanding  the  bounty  of  nature, 
thus  serving  the  State  as  "soldiers  of  the  common 
good,"  yet  ready  also  for  defense  whenever  defense 
may  be  required  ?  Not  a  dollar  of  their  pay  would  be 
wasted,  but  every  cent  permanently  invested.  Use 
the  present  military  posts  as  training  schools  for 
officers,  convert  your  new  army  of  experienced  engineers 
into  a  great  band  of  reservists  after  a  limited  service, 
substituting  an  earned  home  on  reclaimed  lands  for  a 
pension,  and  you  have  gone  far  toward  solving  our 
twofold  national  problem  of  conservation  and  defense. 

And  Mr.  Traver  sums  up  the  advantages  of 
this  new  army  system  as  follows  : 

It  will  : 

1.  Provide  an  adequate  standing  army. 

2.  Provide  a  suitable  trained  reserve. 

3.  Improve  the  morale  of  the  soldier. 

4.  Build  up  our  great  public  works. 

5.  Fit  the  soldier  for  conditions  of  war. 

6.  Provide  for  surplus  labor  in  hard  times. 

7.  Relieve  one  of  the  causes  of  depression. 

8.  Retain  the  self-respect  of  the  unemployed. 

9.  Give   the   American   people   value   received   for 
every  dollar  spent  on  the  army. 

Such  a  plan  would  go  far  toward  a  really 
constructive  preparedness,  and  give  America 
an  army  in  whose  morale  and  value  we  might 
steadily  rejoice. 


234  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

And  on  the  side  of  intellectual  reinvigora- 
tion,  are  we  content  to  have  it  true  that  one 
can  count  almost  on  the  fingers  of  one  hand 
the  American  political  leaders  and  political 
journals  that  give  evidence  that  they  are 
thinking  in  world  terms,  and  are  thinking 
through  in  any  adequate  fashion  the  present 
problems  of  humanity  ?  Fortunately  there 
are  many  men  and  women  all  over  the  world 
to-day,  and  scores  of  organizations,  —  too 
generally  sneered  at  by  the  politicians, — 
who  are  thinking  in  world  terms,  who  are 
definitely  forecasting  a  new  civilization  and 
its  demands,  and  are  willing  to  sacrifice  for 
it.  Are  we  willing  to  come  to  intellectual 
grips  with  humanity's  problems  at  this  critical 
hour  ?  Are  we  willing  to  do  a  little  hard 
close  thinking,  in  order  to  see  with  such 
clearness  and  definiteness  that  we  may  make 
sure  that  every  ounce  of  strength  we  possess 
is  thrown  into  the  scale  for  the  new  civili- 
zation ? 

This  in  turn  all  goes  back  to  the  necessity 
of  a  thorough  reinvigoration  of  our  moral 
spirit  and  of  our  religious  faith.  At  the 
bottom  of  our  national  and  international 
perils  lies  the  old  scandal  of  individual  and 
class  and  national  selfishness.     This  is  what 


CITIZENS   OF    A   NEW   CIVILIZATION     235 

makes  a  change  in  our  political  control  avail 
nothing  for  a  sounder  and  decenter  national 
life.  This  is  what  makes  it  seem  a  normal 
and  justifiable  thing  that  the  attempted  ap- 
plication of  Christian  principles  to  national 
and  international  aifairs  should  be  scouted 
as  preposterous.  But  we  may  not  so  easily 
escape  the  laws  of  human  nature,  which  are 
the  laws  of  God.  This  war,  in  fact,  is  a  kind 
of  scientific  demonstration  and  vindication 
of  the  teachings  of  Christ  in  the  larger 
national  and  international  problems.  For 
no  even  decent  civilization  is  possible,  with- 
out at  least  some  return  to  Christian  prin- 
ciples, —  without  truth  and  trust  and  co- 
operation. And  no  significant  peace  and 
greatly  worth  while  civilization  can  come, 
without  a  deepening  of  our  Christianity  and 
such  an  honest  application  of  it  to  the  nations 
as  the  world  has  never  yet  seen.  Some  sense 
of  this  seems  already  dawning  upon  the 
world.     As  Mr.  Wells  puts  it: 

While  we  have  been  talking  of  the  decline  of  faith, 
faith  has  so  grown  as  to  burst  all  its  ancient  formulas ; 
while  we  have  talked  of  decadence  and  materialism,  a 
new  spirit  has  been  born  under  our  eyes.  How  can 
this  spirit  be  best  defined  ?  It  is  the  creative  spirit  as 
distinguished  from  the  legal  spirit ;    it  is  the  spirit  of 


236  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

courage  to  make  and  not  the  spirit  that  waits  and  sees 
and  claims ;  it  is  the  spirit  that  looks  to  the  future  and 
not  to  the  past.  It  is  the  spirit  that  makes  Booking 
forget  that  it  is  not  Braintree  and  John  Smith  forget 
that  he  is  John  Smith,  and  both  remember  that  they 
are  England.  For  every  one  there  are  two  diametrically 
different  ways  of  thinking  about  life  :  there  is  individual- 
ism, the  way  that  comes  as  naturally  as  the  grunt  from 
a  pig,  of  thinking  outwardly  from  oneself  as  the  center 
of  the  universe ;  and  there  is  the  way  that  every  religion 
is  trying  in  some  form  to  teach,  of  thinking  back  to 
oneself  from  greater  standards  and  realities.  There  is 
the  Braintree  that  is  Braintree  against  England  and  the 
world,  giving  as  little  as  possible  and  getting  the  best 
of  the  bargain  ;  and  there  is  the  Braintree  that  identifies 
itself  with  England  and  asks  how  can  we  do  best  for 
the  world  with  this  little  place  of  ours,  how  can  we  edu- 
cate best,  produce  most,  and  make  our  roads  straight 
and  good  for  the  world  to  go  through. 

3.  Such  a  moral  and  religious  remvigora- 
tion  implies  a  third  demand  of  the  new  age 
—  a  new  grasp  upon  the  principle  of  the 
organic  view  of  truth  and  of  human  society. 
Truth  comes  by  the  honest  interaction  of 
many  minds.  And  all  human  social  values 
require  a  like  cooperation.  Scientific  co- 
operation on  an  enormous  scale  has  been 
forced  upon  the  belligerents  on  both  sides, 
and,  as  already  implied,  is  likely  to  be  so 
forced  after  the  war  to  a  degree  never  before 


CITIZENS   OF   A  NEW   CIVILIZATION     237 

true.  Within  individual  nations,  and  within 
allied  groups  of  nations,  the  inevitable  grip 
of  the  principle  is  already  recognized  and 
driven  home.  Is  it  for  an  instant  conceiv- 
able that  the  application  of  the  principle 
can  stop  there,  without  inherent  self-contra- 
diction ?  Any  full  and  rational  cooperation 
between  human  beings  goes  back  to  a  fun- 
damental moral  and  Christian  principle,  — 
the  demand  for  "mental  and  spiritual  fellow- 
ship among  men,  and  mental  and  spiritual 
independence  on  the  part  of  the  individual." 
Both  sides  of  the  demand  are  equally  essen- 
tial. For  the  most  fruitful  cooperation  im- 
plies that  men  need  one  another,  and  need 
the  best  and  most  that  each  can  give.  Men 
must  have  fellowship,  and  the  best  must  be 
called  out  from  each. 

It  may  be  fairly  said,  I  think,  that  of  the 
two  groups  of  belligerents  the  Teutonic  Allies 
on  the  whole  have  put  their  main  emphasis 
upon  fellowship,  —  the  closest  scientific  co- 
operation, though  within  a  restricted  range; 
the  Entente  Allies,  especially  England  and 
France,  have  put  their  emphasis  upon  mental 
and  spiritual  independence  on  the  part  of 
the  individual.  Both  emphases  are  essen- 
tial.    Only  together  do  they  adequately  ex- 


238  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

press  the  moral  law  for  both  individuals  and 
nations.  Each  group  has  much  to  learn 
from  the  other.  On  the  one  hand,  we  may 
not  go  our  antagonistic,  wasteful,  selfish 
ways  with  impunity,  as  individuals  or  com- 
munities or  nations.  We  must  scientifically 
cooperate  —  and  to  the  limits  of  humanity. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  need  to  secure  the 
freest  initiative  and  the  fullest  contribution 
from  each  individual  and  class  and  nation 
and  civilization.  No  nation  or  civilization  is 
so  rich  as  to  afford  to  blot  out  or  to  ignore 
the  contributions  of  the  rest.  To  attempt 
to  apply  the  principle  of  cooperation  in  a 
spirit  of  insular,  provincial,  or  arrogant  na- 
tional selfishness  is  self-contradictory,  and  is 
to  go  back  two  thousand  years  in  a  virtual 
return  to  the  exclusive  state  of  antiquity, 
with  its  absolute  domination  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  its  utter  denial  of  any  obligations 
outside  the  state. 

Certainly  no  new  civilization  will  be 
worthy  the  name,  or  command  the  loyalty  of 
humanity  that  does  not  definitely  seek  to 
combine  the  gifts  and  graces  of  all  the  nations 
and  civilizations,  whether  English  or  German 
or  French  or  Austrian  or  Russian  or  Belgian 
or    Japanese    or    Polish.     It    is    inspiring    to 


CITIZENS   OF   A   NEW   CIVILIZATION     239 

think  that  the  great  conference  of  the  rep- 
resentatives of  the  Allies  at  Paris  was  "  really 
a  legislative  Parliament  of  eight  nations,"  and 
dealt  with  many  questions  outside  the  war, 
such  as  an  international  patent  office,  laws  con- 
cerning stock  companies  and  business  failures, 
and  telegraph,  telephone,  and  postal  rates. 
The  Allies  thus  afforded,  as  The  Nation  said, 
"an  admirable  example  of  how  easy  it  is  for 
the  peoples  of  a  large  section  of  the  globe  to 
legislate  in  a  Parliament  of  nations.  Who 
shall  say  that  this  gathering  may  not  in  the 
years  to  come  be  recognized  as  the  first  prac- 
tical step  toward  a  World  Congress  ?"  For 
the  nations  represented  constitute,  it  is  to  be 
noted,  more  than  one-half  of  both  the  total 
area  and  population  of  the  globe.  If  co- 
operation on  that  scale  is  already  possible, 
our  faith  should  strengthen  in  cooperation  of 
a  still  greater  and  more  ideal  sort. 

4.  What  has  already  been  said  involves  a 
fourth  demand  of  the  new  age,  —  that  its 
civilization  shall  be  frankly,  definitely  Chris- 
tian, in  a  more  consistent,  thorough,  and 
deep-going  fashion  than  any  nation  has  yet 
achieved. 

(i)  First  of  all,  I  cannot  shake  off  the  con- 
viction that  in  this  world-shaking  war,  God 


240  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

is  sifting  out  the  true  from  the  false  Chris- 
tianity. His  ''fan  is  in  his  hand  and  he  will 
thoroughly  cleanse  his  threshing  floor." 
Once  more  "He  is  sifting  out  the  hearts  of 
men  before  his  judgment  seat."  And  it  is 
being  forced  home  upon  the  reasons  and 
consciences  of  men  to-day  that  a  primarily 
theological  Christianity,  a  primarily  emotion- 
ally mystical  Christianity,  a  primarily  cere- 
monial Christianity,  a  Christianity  that 
adopts  God  as  a  kind  of  national  perquisite, 
and  an  Old  Testament  kind  of  Christianity, 
—  have  all  alike  failed  to  stand  the  test  of 
these  crucial  days. 

"It  is  altogether  too  rashly  assumed,"  says 
a  modern  writer  on  the  war,  "by  people  whose 
sentimentality  outruns  their  knowledge,  that 
Christianity  is  essentially  an  attempt  to 
carry  out  the  personal  teachings  of  Christ. 
It  is  nothing  of  the  sort,  and  no  church 
authority  will  support  that  idea.  Chris- 
tianity .  .  .  was  and  is  a  theological  reli- 
gion." Now  so  far  as  that  is  true,  it  must 
cease  to  be  true.  That  kind  of  Christianity 
is  being  shaken  to  its  base.  All  these  kinds 
of  Christianity,  in  fact,  have  been  readily 
harmonized  in  all  the  belligerent  nations  in 
this  war  with   a  bitterness   and  hatred   and 


CITIZENS   OF   A   NEW   CIVILIZATION     241 

ferocity  utterly  un-Christlike.  They  simply 
are  not  Christian.  The  only  kind  of  Chris- 
tianity that  can  be  said  to  have  come  out  of 
this  war  unscathed  is  a  Christianity  that  is  a 
true  reflection  of  the  spirit  and  teachings  of 
Christ,  that  is  consequently  ethical  through 
and  through,  not  tribal  but  universal  in  its 
appeal,  and  with  an  ethics  capable  of  ap- 
plication as  truly  to  nations  and  national 
relations  as  to  individuals  and  individual 
relations.  The  Christianity  of  the  new 
civilization  must  certainly  learn  the  lesson 
which  Edith  Cavell  learned.  It  is  an  English 
humorist,  Jerome  K.  Jerome,  who  wrote  of 
her : 

The  finest  thing  she  did,  not  only  for  her  country  but 
for  the  men  and  women  of  all  lands,  was  when  she  put 
aside  all  hatred,  all  bitterness.  "Standing  as  I  do  in 
view  of  God  and  eternity,  I  realize  that  patriotism  is 
not  enough.  I  must  have  no  hatred  or  bitterness 
toward  anyone."  We,  too,  are  standing  before  God 
and  eternity,  and  His  judgment  is  awaiting  us.  For  us, 
too,  patriotism  is  not  enough.  Our  victory  must  be 
not  only  over  the  Germans  but  over  ourselves.  We 
must  have  no  hatred,  no  bitterness.  By  no  other 
means  will  peace  be  "conclusive." 

The  Young  Women's  Christian  Associa- 
tion of  Boston  have  been  having  some  inter- 
national  social   gatherings    during   the   year. 


242  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

At  a  recent  gathering,  some  one  asked, 
writes  the  Secretary  reporting, 

Whether  we  could  not  sing  something  together. 

"Why,"  I  exclaimed,  "how  can  we?  There  is  no 
language  all  of  us  speak." 

"But,"  suggested  a  French  girl,  "tunes  are  the  same, 
and  there  ought  to  be  a  tune  we  all  know,  even  if  we 
have  to  sing  different  words." 

"Everybody  knows  'Holy  Night,'"  said  a  woman  of 
large  musical  ability,  born  in  Russia,  of  English  and 
German  parentage,  with  own  cousins  in  each  of  the 
three  armies. 

She  sat  down  at  the  piano  and  began  to  play  the  song. 
An  American  concert  singer  with  a  rare  voice,  invited 
in  for  the  occasion,  stood  by  her  and  led.  One  after 
another  the  others  joined,  till  French,  Swiss,  German, 
Austrian,  Belgian,  Pole,  Russian,  and  Italian  were  all 
singing  together  the  same  message  to  the  same  music  — 
but  each  in  her  own  tongue. 

If  all  start  from  Christ,  the  nations  can  come 
into  harmony,  even  though  each  sings  in  its 
ov^n  tongue. 

(2)  It  should  not  be  less  clear  that,  if  the 
nevv^  civilization  is  to  be  genuinely  Christian, 
there  must  be  in  it  an  utter  abandonment  of 
the  philosophy  of  the  state  as  a  law  to  itself 
and  as  above  the  claims  of  Christian  morality. 
I  believe  that  no  issue  in  this  terrifying  war 
is  so  transcendent  as  this.     For  the  possibil- 


CITIZENS   OF   A  NEW   CIVILIZATION     243 

ities  for  evil  of  this  philosophy  are  simply 
limitless.  Nothing  can  be  so  frightful  that 
this  view  cannot  justify  it.  I  do  not  see, 
therefore,  how  I  can  honestly  discuss  the 
problems  of  these  crucial  days  and  refuse  to 
face  this  issue  also.  For,  so  far  as  I  can  see, 
this  doctrine  of  the  state  is  paganism  pure  and 
simple,  and  makes  any  nation  avowing  it 
intrinsically  and  just  so  far,  whether  it  will 
or  not,  an  enemy  of  civilization,  of  mankind, 
of  Christianity.  It  concerns  every  interest 
of  humanity  of  every  race,  that  this  demo- 
niacal philosophy  of  the  state  should  perish 
beyond  power  of  resurrection.  It  is  not  by 
accident  that  the  most  terrible  expressions  of 
hatred  and  of  unmeasured  arrogance,  and 
that  the  most  ruthless  destruction  of  non- 
combatants,  including  the  unspeakable  Ar- 
menian massacre,  have  come  from  those 
Powers  that  have  more  or  less  definitely 
avowed  this  philosophy  of  the  state.  It 
behooves  us  all  to  see  with  vividness  and 
concreteness,  just  what  this  theory  of  the 
state  is  capable  of;  and  for  that  purpose 
only,  and  with  reluctance,  I  quote  the  terrible 
"Hymn  of  the  German  Sword,"  produced  in 
a  University  town  —  Leipsic  —  and  running 
within  a  week  or  so  into  half  a  dozen  edi- 


244  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

tions.  I  do  not  and  cannot  for  an  instant 
believe  that  it  truly  reflects  the  general 
German  mind,  but  it  certainly  ought  to  stir 
every  true  German  and  every  true  lover  of 
the  German  people  to  determine  utterly  to 
destroy  every  vestige  of  the  hellish  doctrine 
of  the  state,  out  of  which  these  lines  are 
born : 

It  is  no  duty  of  mine  to  be  either  just  or  compassion- 
ate ;  it  suffices  that  I  am  sanctified  by  my  exalted  mis- 
sion, and  that  I  blind  the  eyes  of  my  enemies  with  such 
streams  of  tears  as  shall  make  the  proudest  of  them 
cringe  in  terror  under  the  vault  of  heaven. 

I  have  slaughtered  the  old  and  the  sorrowful ;  I 
have  struck  off  the  breasts  of  women ;  and  I  have  run 
through  the  body  of  children  who  gazed  at  me  with  the 
eyes  of  the  wounded  lion. 

Day  after  day  I  ride  aloft  on  the  shadowy  horse  in 
the  valley  of  cypresses ;  and  as  I  ride  I  draw  forth  the 
life  blood  from  every  enemy's  son  that  dares  to  dispute 
my  path. 

It  is  meet  and  right  that  I  should  cry  aloud  my 
pride,  for  am  I  not  the  flaming  messenger  of  the  Lord 
Almighty  ^ 

Germany  is  so  far  above  and  beyond  all  the  other 
nations  that  all  the  rest  of  the  earth,  be  they  who  they 
may,  should  feel  themselves  well  done  by  when  they  are 
allowed  to  fight  with  the  dogs  for  the  crumbs  that  fall 
from  her  table. 

When  Germany  the  divine  is  happy,  then  the  rest 
of   the   world   basks   in   smiles ;    but  when   Germany 


CITIZENS   OF  A  NEW   CIVILIZATION     245 

suflfers,  God  in  person  is  rent  with  anguish,  and,  wrath- 
ful and  avenging,  He  turns  all  the  waters  into  rivers 
of  blood. 

The  language  is  the  exalted  language  of  reli- 
gion, but  the  spirit  we  cannot  mistake.  As 
another  has  said,  it  is  "the  genuine  brew  of 
hell."  Men  of  all  nationalities,  on  both 
sides,  may  well  unceasingly  pray  that  one  of 
the  chief  accomplishments  of  this  terrible 
war  may  be  the  absolute  annihilation  of  this 
unspeakable  philosophy  of  the  super-state  as 
well  as  of  the  super-man.  There  can  be 
no  conceivable  peace  between  that  philoso- 
phy and  Christianity. 

No,  if  Christianity  be  true  and  divine  at 
all,  the  principles  of  Christ  are  applicable  to 
nations  as  well  as  to  individuals.  As  Presi- 
dent Wilson  puts  it,  "It  is  clear  that  nations 
must  in  the  future  be  governed  by  the  same 
high  code  of  honor  that  we  demand  of  in- 
dividuals." As  surely  as  the  individual  must 
respect  the  person  of  other  individuals,  the 
nation  must  respect  both  its  own  individual 
citizens  and  other  nations.  As  surely  as 
truth  is  demanded  in  individual  relations,  so 
surely  is  it  demanded  between  nations.  As 
surely  as  a  man  must  put  his  honor  above  his 
life,    so   surely   must   a   nation,    as    Belgium 


246  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

gloriously  proved.  A  current  cartoon  of  the 
time  represented  the  Kaiser  as  saying  to  King 
Albert,  "So,  you  see  —  you've  lost  every- 
thing." "Not  my  soul,"  replies  the  King. 
As  surely  as  individuals  are  called  to  unselfish 
helpfulness,  so  surely  nations,  if  the  world  is 
ever  to  be  the  brotherhood  of  men  it  ought  to 
be,  must  not  proceed  on  selfish  principles. 
They  can  no  more  escape  the  blighting  con- 
sequences of  such  a  course  in  their  own  life 
than  can  the  individual. 

The  whole  philosophy  of  selfishness  is  self- 
defeating,  whether  for  the  individual  or  for 
the  nation.  For  the  laws  of  God  are  laws  of 
life ;  and  in  God's  universe  there  is  no  such 
source  of  enlarging  life  as  unselfish  love,  and 
the  man  or  the  nation  that  would  be  first  of 
all  must  be  first  in  service.  Even  from  a 
merely  commercial  point  of  view,  to  destroy 
another  nation  economically,  is  just  so  far  to 
destroy  at  the  same  time  that  nation's  power 
to  be  a  profitable  customer.  Legitimate  com- 
merce is  built  on  mutual  benefit.  To  follow 
the  present  war  with  a  hardly  less  bitter 
economic  war  —  as  many  are  proposing — is 
folly  unspeakable,  and  would  be  once  more 
to  sow  the  seeds  of  inevitable  and  self-destroy- 
ing strife. 


CITIZENS   OF   A   NEW   CIVILIZATION     247 

(3)  As  an  early  step  to  that  more  Chris- 
tian world  that  ought  to  be,  some  form  of  a 
League  of  Nations  to  Enforce  Peace  is  prob- 
ably imperative.  America,  as  well  as  other 
nations,  must  give  up  the  mad  idea  of  arma- 
ments so  gigantic  as  to  defend  herself  in  iso- 
lation against  the  world.  She  must  definitely 
welcome  such  a  creed  and  policy  as  President 
Wilson  outlined : 

We  believe  these  fundamental  things. 

First,  that  every  people  has  a  right  to  choose  the 
sovereignty  under  which  they  shall  live.  .  .  . 

Second,  that  the  small  states  of  the  world  have  a 
right  to  enjoy  the  same  respect  for  their  sovereignty 
and  for  their  territorial  integrity  that  great  and  power- 
ful nations  expect  and  insist  upon. 

And,  third,  that  the  world  has  a  right  to  be  free  from 
every  disturbance  of  its  peace  that  has  its  origin  in 
aggression  and  disregard  of  the  rights  of  peoples  and 
nations. 

So  sincerely  do  we  believe  in  these  things  that  I  am 
sure  that  I  speak  the  mind  and  wish  of  the  people  of 
America  when  I  say  that  the  United  States  is  willing 
to  become  a  partner  in  any  feasible  association  of 
nations  formed  in  order  to  realize  these  objects  and 
make  them  secure  against  violation. 

(4)  Looking  still  farther  into  the  future, 
Dr.  Jordan  thus  sums  up  plans  for  a  perma- 
nent peace : 


248  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

All  of  the  intelligent  constructive  propositions  for 
lasting  peace,  thus  far  proposed,  with  others  crowding 
to  the  front  in  practically  every  nation,  agree  in  essential 
demands.  They  unite  in  the  petition  for  democratic 
control  of  governmental  action ;  for  the  use  of  law 
instead  of  force  in  the  adjustment  of  international  dis- 
putes —  though  some  feel  that  a  force,  police  in  its 
character,  should  stand  behind  the  world  court  as  a 
support  or  sanction.  They  demand  the  interposition 
of  difficulties  in  the  way  of  declarations  of  war,  taking 
these  declarations  out  of  the  hands  of  any  single  man 
or  any  small  group  acting  in  secret.  All  have  the 
demand  of  a  concert  of  peoples,  instead  of  non-repre- 
sentative diplomats  known  as  the  "concert  of  Powers." 

These  propositions  call  not  only  for  a  permanent 
court  of  arbitration,  but  also  for  a  permanent  council 
for  the  investigation  of  facts  of  international  interest. 
All  ask  for  disarmament  to  some  degree,  and  most  of 
them  for  the  national  ownership  of  armament-manu- 
facturing plants  and  the  abolition  of  private  profits  in 
armament-making.  Most  of  them  would  have  the 
Hague  Conferences  revived  and  strengthened,  would 
call  for  immunity  of  private  property  at  sea  and  for 
international  neutralization  of  the  channels  of  com- 
merce. Most  of  them  deny  the  right  of  conquest,  and 
ask  that  no  arbitrary  changes  of  boundary  be  made 
without  the  consent  of  the  people  immediately  affected. 
Those  who  refer  to  indemnities  are  opposed  to  them 
under  all  circumstances  as  being  in  the  nature  of  high- 
way robbery. 

In  general,  all  seem  to  realize  that  militarism  will 
not  put  an  end  to  militarism,  and  the  reduction  of  the 
military  control  must  lie  with  the  people  themselves. 


CITIZENS   OF   A  NEW   CIVILIZATION     249 

They  assume  that  the  people  are  a  more  potent  as  well 
as  a  more  rational  force  in  public  affairs  than  are  armies 
and  navies. 

All  over  the  world  these  constructive  plans  for  lasting 
peace  are  being  formed. 

But  a  Christian  civilization  cannot  be 
satisfied  simply  to  avoid  war  or  to  secure  an 
abiding  peace.  It  must  look  to  great  con- 
structive cooperative  enterprises  that  shall 
bring  in  justice  and  righteousness  and  mutual 
helpfulness  among  all  the  nations  :  —  it  must 
look,  that  is,  to  something  like  a  genuine 
Parliament  of  the  Nations,  to  a  true  civiliza- 
tion of  brotherly  men.  Christian  men  and 
women  certainly  must  do  more  than  accept 
this  as  an  abstract  goal.  They  must  believe 
in  it,  and  hold  themselves  pledged  perpetually 
and  sacrificially  to  back  every  practicable 
step  toward  that  goal.  They  are  to  take 
heed,  therefore,  to  themselves,  that  they  be 
ready  to  be  citizens  of  this  new  civilization. 

IV 

The  Appeal  to  American  Youth 

When  I  think  of  this  new  civilization  which 
I  must  believe  lies  ahead,  I  am  not  anxious 
for  our  national  physical   safety,   but  I  am 


250  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

anxious  for  our  moral  life.  I  am  anxious  that 
America  take  a  part  worthy  of  her  in  that 
new  civilization,  and  in  bringing  it  to  pass. 
That  will  depend  most  of  all  upon  American 
youth.  I  bring  back  to  them  especially, 
therefore,  once  more,  Christ's  challenge  at  a 
like  world  crisis  :   "Take  heed  to  yourselves." 

First  of  all,  with  all  your  souls  believe  in 
the  possibilities  of  the  new  civilization,  and 
throw  your  whole  selves  into  the  struggle  for 
its  on-coming.  Do  not  be  cynics  nor  stand- 
patters. 

In  the  second  place,  accept  your  special 
obligations  as  Americans  to-day.  Be  intel- 
ligent, thoughtful,  unselfish  American  citi- 
zens, with  world  vision,  ashamed  not  to 
think  in  world  terms,  in  terms  of  humanity. 
So  thinking,  you  will  remember  that  no 
generation  since  the  world  began  has  ever 
witnessed  such  a  destruction  of  youthful 
leaders  as  has  yours.  That  tragic  fact  lays 
hands  of  solemn  consecration  upon  your 
heads  in  this  hour. 

In  the  third  place,  forecast  with  all  the 
help  you  can  obtain  from  the  clearest-sighted 
and  farthest-sighted  social  prophets  of  our 
time,  the  demands  of  the  new  age,  that  you 
may  dedicate  yourselves  wholly  to  them. 


CITIZENS   OF   A  NEW   CIVILIZATION     251 

Be  sure,  therefore,  first,  that  the  new  age 
will  have  a  new  sense  of  the  inescapable  grip 
of  the  laws  of  God  in  the  life  of  nations  as 
well  as  of  individuals ;  and  keep  it  in  remem- 
brance for  your  own  nation,  as  you  do  what 
in  you  lies  to  guard  her  seed-sowing. 

Be  sure,  second,  that  the  nation  that 
means  to  be  ready  to  play  its  full  part  in  the 
new  civilization,  must,  with  stern  self-disci- 
pline, thoroughly  reinvigorate  the  whole  range 
of  its  life,  —  physical,  political,  economic, 
social,  intellectual,  moral,  and  religious.  The 
time  for  slovenliness  of  national  life  in  any 
realm  is  gone.  "Take  heed  to  yourselves," 
therefore,  for  the  higher  glory  of  your  own 
nation. 

Be  sure,  third,  that  you  keep  your  vision  of 
the  organic  view  of  truth  and  of  human 
society,  and  so  preserve  a  lively  sense  of  the 
value  of  the  contribution  of  every  man  and 
class  and  nation  and  civilization,  in  that  new 
dawning  world  of  cooperating,  mutually  re- 
specting nations. 

Be  sure,  finally,  that  your  Christianity  is 
the  Christianity  of  Christ,  of  no  make-believe 
and  ineffective  type,  but  purged  clean  of 
shallowness,  of  hatred  and  of  arrogance, 
capable  of  application   to  the  whole  life  of 


252  FUNDAMENTAL  QUESTIONS 

nations  no  less  than  of  individuals,  and 
capable,  above  all,  of  the  sacrificial  spirit. 

He  was  shot,  my  last  boy  (said  a  French  officer  to 
Mr.  Frank  H.  Simonds),  up  near  Verdun,  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war.  He  did  not  die  at  once  and  I  went  to 
him.  For  twenty  days  I  sat  beside  him  in  a  cellar 
waiting  for  him  to  die.  I  bought  the  last  coffin  In  the 
village  that  he  might  be  burled  In  It  and  kept  it  under 
my  bed.  We  talked  many  times  before  he  died,  and  he 
told  me  all  he  knew  of  the  fight,  of  the  men  about  him 
and  how  they  fell.  My  name  Is  finished,  but  I  say  to 
you  now  that  In  all  that  experience  there  was  nothing 
that  was  not  beautiful. 

Its  beauty  was  the  awful,  the  sanctifying,  the 
consecrating  beauty  of  self-sacrifice.  Its  ter- 
rible price  the  fathers  and  sons,  the  mothers 
and  daughters,  the  age  and  youth  of  more 
than  half  the  nations  of  the  world  are  still 
steadily  paying,  in  the  name,  they  believe,  of 
something  more  than  a  selfish  patriotism. 
Is  this  sifting  searching  world-crisis  to  pass, 
and  bring  no  like  sacrificial  baptism  to  your 
country  and  mine  ?  This  is  our  threatening 
danger.  For  its  forefending  there  must  be 
the  high  beauty  of  sacrifice  for  the  tran- 
scendent aims  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  on 
earth.  We  must  be  genuine  citizens  of  the 
new  civilization.  Only  so  can  Christianity 
prove   itself  Indeed   a  world-religion. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


INDEX 


Ambrosius,  Johanna,  quoted,  150. 
America,  obligations  resting  upon, 

221. 
Animals,  suffering  of,  7  ff. 

Bergson,  referred  to,  14. 
Bowne,  on  error,  15. 
Browning,   quoted,   22,    127;    re- 
ferred to,  71. 
Buddhism,  200  ff. 
Bushnell,  quoted,  1 21-123. 

Cavell,  Edith,  quoted,  241. 

Christ,  light  from,  on  the  problem 
of  sin  and  suffering,  54  ff. ;  help 
from  suffering  of,  55  ff, ;  help 
against  sin  from  the  suffering  of, 
61  ff. ;  on  prayer,  77  ff. ;  ex- 
ample in  prayer,  83  ff. ;  how  we 
are  to  think  about  him,  96  ff. ; 
the  best  life,  97 ;  the  best  ideals 
and  standards,  98;  the  best 
insight  into  the  laws  of  life,  99 ; 
Ranke  on,  97;  the  source  of 
the  best  convictions,  loi ;  the 
source  of  the  best  hopes,  102; 
the  best  dynamic  for  living, 
103 ;  the  best  revelation  of 
God,  105 ;  significance  of  dis- 
cipleship  of,  129  ff. ;  Drum- 
mond  quoted  on,  165  ff. 

Christianity,  as  a  world  religion, 
I90ff.,  2i2ff. ;  the  only  hopeful 
basis  for  Oriental  civilization, 
190  ff.;  alone  can  meet  the 
tests  of  an  adequate  spiritual 
basis  for  the  modern  civiliza- 


tion of  the  Orient,  205  ff. ; 
defective  kinds  of,  240-241. 

Christian  unity,  question  of, 
171  ff. 

Civilization,  the  need  of  an  ade- 
quate spiritual  basis  for,  191  ff. ; 
Oriental,  increasing  sense  of 
need  of  a  new  spiritual  basis  for, 
194  ff. ;  necessary  threefold 
test  of  religious  basis  of  a  mod- 
ern, 199  ff. ;  citizens  of  a  new, 
212  ff. ;  faith  in  the  possibilities 
of  a  new,  216  ff. ;  new,  the 
demands  of,  224  ff. 

Comer,  Mrs.,  The  Massey  Money, 
124-127. 

Common  deeper  life  of  men,  help 
from,  23  ff. 

Confucianism,  200  ff. 

Conscience,  fidelity  to,  1 14. 

Conservative  and  radical,  142. 

Darwin,  on  animal  suffering, 
8. 

Decision,  life's  fundamental, 
109  ff. ;  Jameson,  iii;  signifi- 
cance of  ethical,  even  without 
religious  faith,  I2I  ff. 

Degenerative  diseases,  229. 

Devine,  quoted,  232. 

Drifting  or  steering,  iii  ff. 

Drummond,  referred  to,  164; 
quoted,  on  Christ,  165  ff. 

Duty,  or  pleasure,  118. 

Eliot,  George,  on  pain,  52. 
Emperor  cult,  the,  200. 


253 


254 


INDEX 


Eucken,     referred     to,     14;      on 

meaning  and  value  of  life,  68. 
Evolution,  "dramatic  tendency" 

in,  29;    as  pointing  to  prayer, 

70. 
Experiment     in     Altruism^     An, 

quoted,  50-51. 

Federal  Council  of  Churches, 
quoted,  222  ff. 

Feeling,  domination  by,  112. 

Feminism,  158  ff. 

Ferrero,  quoted,  213,  228. 

Fiske,  John,  on  meaning  of  evolu- 
tion, 9;  on  the  omnipresent 
ethical  trend  of  the  universe, 
30;  on  the  reality  of  religion, 
82-83. 

Freedom,  Goethe  on,  162;  the 
achievement  of  true,  163  ff. 

Galatians,  referred  to,  135  ff. 
German  Sword,  Hymn  of  the,  244- 

245- 

God,  known  through  his  self- 
manifestations,  86  ff. ;  relation 
to,  unobtrusive,  91  ff.;  refusing 
the  will  of,  119. 

Goethe,  on  true  freedom,  162. 

Good,  the  lesser,  116, 

Gordon,  General,  quoted,  215. 

Hadley,  President,  quoted,  153. 
Harris,  Rendel,  quoted,  91-92. 
Hastings,  Elizabeth,  quoted,  50- 

51- 

Hebrews,  referred  to,  55. 
Herrmann,  on  prayer,  73. 
Hinton,  Mystery  of  Pain,  quoted, 

60,  62. 
Hobhouse,  on  true  freedom,  169. 

Immortality,  help  of  faith  in, 
31  ff. 


Jacks,  quoted,  IS3-IS4- 

James,     Book    of,     referred     to, 

135  ff. ;    and  Paul  contrasted, 

146. 
James,   referred  to,   14,  79,   163 ; 

on  sin,  15;   on  the  prophet,  57; 

Is  Life  Worth  Living,  quoted, 

58-59;       on      psychology     of 

prayer,  71;   on  decision,  iii. 
Jerome    K.    Jerome,    on    Edith 

Cavell,  241. 
Jordan,  David  Starr,  on  plans  for 

a  permanent  peace,  248-249. 
Jude,  referred  to,  135  ff. 

Kant,  referred  to,  39,  134. 

Law,  universality  not  uniformity 
of,  66 ;  and  liberty,  life's  funda- 
mental paradox,  133  ff. 

Lawlessness,  selfish,  159  ff. 

Laws,  need  of,  20;  no  eternal 
self-existing,  67;  of  God,  grip 
of  the,  in  the  life  of  nations, 
224  ff. 

League  of  Nations  to  enforce 
peace,  247. 

LeConte,  referred  to,  21. 

Le  Gallienne,  quoted,  31. 

Leibnitz,  referred  to,  18. 

Liberty  and  law,  life's  funda- 
mental paradox,  133  ff. ;  why 
this  problem  constantly  recurs, 
137  ff . ;  the  New  Testament 
solution  of  the  problem,  144  ff. ; 
relation  of  the  Christian  solu- 
tion of  the  paradox  to  other 
theories  of  life,  148  ff. ;  modern 
examples  of  the  paradox,  153  ff. 

Loofs,  referred  to,  208. 

Lord's  Prayer,  as  standard  of 
prayer,  92. 

Lotze,  referred  to,  4,  10,  16;  on 
problem    of    evil,    26-28;     on 


INDEX 


255 


need    of    opposition,    47;     on 
pain,  52. 
Loyalty,  113. 

Man's  vision,  smallness  of,  25 ; 
nature.  Christian  implications 
of,  43  ff. ;  made  for  action,  45  fF. 

Marriage,  as  an  institution,  158- 

159; 

Martineau,  quoted,  21. 
Matheson,  on  sacrifice,  60. 
Moral  character,  prerequisites  of, 

12  if.;    universe,  the  demand 

for,  18  ff. 

Nation,   The,  on  England's  Irish 

policy,  227 ;  on  a  Parliament  of 

Nations,  239. 
National   defense,   conditions  of, 

231  ff. 
Nature,  final  forces  in,  unseen,  87- 

88. 
New  Republic,  The,  quoted,  218. 
Nietzsche,  referred  to,  134. 

Organic  view  of  truth  and  human 
society,  236  ff. 

Pain,  George  Eliot  on,  52;  Lotze 
on,  52;  Hinton's  Mystery  of 
Pain,  quoted,  60,  62. 

Paradox,  life's  fundamental,  133  fi". 

Paul  and  Book  of  James  con- 
trasted, 146. 

Paulsen,  referred  to,  4;  quoted, 
45-46;    on  vicarious  suffering, 

54- 

Peace,  League  of  Nations  to 
enforce,  247;  David  Starr 
Jordan  on  plans  for  a  perma- 
nent, 248-249. 

Personal  intercourse,  no  literal 
transfer  of  thought  in,  88  ff. 

Peter,  i,  referred  to,  55;  2, 
referred  to,  135  ff. 


Pfleiderer,  on  fellowship  with 
God,  69. 

Pleasure  or  duty,  1 18. 

Political  reinvigoration,  need  of, 
230-231. 

Prayer,  diflftculties  concerning, 
66  ff. ;  difficulties  connected 
with  supposed  scientific  view- 
point, 66  ff. ;  James  on  the 
psychology  of,  71 ;  scope  of, 
72  ff. ;  Herrmann  on,  73 ; 
difficulties  from  a  false  concep- 
tion of,  75  ff. ;  gauge,  75  ff. ; 
Christ  on,  yy  ff. ;  difficulties 
from  the  supposed  improbabil- 
ity of,  81  ff.;  Christ's  example 
in,  83  ff. ;  difficulty  from  the 
lack  of  a  felt  presence  and 
response,  85  ff. ;  Lord's  Prayer 
as  standard  of,  92 ;  most  signifi- 
cant answers  to,  93-94;  diffi- 
culty of  intercessory,  94-95. 

Problem  of  evil,  the  universality 
of,  5  ;   Lotze  on,  26-28. 

Psychology,  false  animal,  lo-ii. 

Radical  and  Conservative,  142. 
Railway     Age     Gazette,     quoted, 

155  ff. 

Ranke,  on  Christ,  97. 

Reality,  three  realms  of,  the  is, 
the  must,  the  ought,  4, 

Religion,  John  Fiske  on  the  reality 
of,  82-83. 

Religious  basis  of  a  modern  civili- 
zation, necessary  threefold  test 
of,  199  ff. 

Revelation,  referred  to,  55. 

Romans,  referred  to,  135  ff. 

Royce,  on  loyalty,  11 3-1 14. 

Sabbath,  the  values  of,  160-161. 
Scherer,    James    A.    B.,    quoted, 

232-233. 


256 


INDEX 


Scientific  spirit,  surrender  to,  115. 
Self-assertion   and   self-surrender, 

143- 
Self-discipline,    in    national    life, 

229  if. 
Selfish  lawlessness,  159  ff. 
Selfishness,  128. 
Self-surrender  and  self-assertion, 

143- 

Shinto,  200. 

Simonds,  Frank  H.,  quoted,  252. 

Sin  and  suffering,  light  from 
Christ  on  problem  of,  54  ff. 

Sky  Pilot,  The,  quoted,  58. 

Socialism,  the  real  leaders  of,  155. 

Spiritual  basis  for  civilization,  the 
need  of  an  adequate,  191  ff. ; 
increasing  sense  of  need  of  a 
new  spiritual  basis  for  Oriental 
civilization,  194  ff. ;  for  the 
modern  civilization  of  the 
Orient,  Christianity  alone  can 
meet  the  tests  of  an  adequate, 
205  ff. 

Stilgebauer,  Dr.  Edward,  quoted, 
226. 

Story,  quoted,  121. 

Stowe,  Mrs.,  Uncle  Tom,  57. 

Suffering,  in  the  animal  world, 
7  ff. ;  four  views  of,  34  ff. ;  in 
the  Book  of  Job,  34  ff. ;  as 
punishment,  35-36;  as  dis- 
cipHne,  36  ff. ;  as  defense 
against  prudential  selfishness, 
38  ff. ;  in  the  light  of  the  great- 
ness of  God,  41  ff. ;  in  personal 
relations,  47-48;  as  redemp- 
tive, 48-49;  fellowship  in,  as 
a  help  to  love,  51;    problem  of 


sin  and,  light  from  Christ  on, 
54  ff. ;   vicarious,  58  ff. 

Suffragism,  militant,  157  ff. 

Syncretism,  a  new  religious  syn- 
cretism inadequate  for  Japanese 
civilization,  202  ff. 

Syndicalism,  157. 

Temperamental  differences,  bear- 
ing on  Christian  unity,  174  ff. 

Thomson  and  Geddes,  on  meaning 
of  evolution,  9. 

Traver,  Harry  G.,  quoted,  233. 

Trumbull,  referred  to,  74. 

Tyndall,  referred  to,  75. 

Uniformity  in  creedal  statement 
not  desirable,  177  ff. ;  complete 
uniformity  of  statement  and 
belief  impossible,  180  ff. ;  un- 
desirable, 183  ff. 

Unity,  Christian,  question  of, 
171  ff. ;  a  true  organic,  176; 
our  real  unity  in  our  common 
life  in  Christ,  186  ff. 

Wallace,  on  animal  suffering,  8. 

Warfield,  quoted,  128. 

Wells,  H.  G.,   quoted,   219-220; 

on    a    new    creative    spirit    in 

national  life,  235-236. 
Wilfulness,  117. 
Wilson,    President,    quoted,    245, 

247. 
World,  love  of  the,  123  ff. 
Wundt,  referred  to,  4. 

Y.  W.  C.  A.  of  Boston,  interna- 
tional social  gatherings  of,  241- 
242. 


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